9 Totally Gross Things You’ll Have to Do When You Become a Parent
Parenthood is not for the faint of heart. I wish I could say the crying and diapers were the worst of it. But it’s not. Getting pooped on or eating your food with a hint of snot.. it gets icky on this journey. In the last 365 days, I have been a parent, I have had to do some REALLY gross stuff. And it only gets worse from here.
Have a baby on the way? Already have your own bundle of joy? Let’s assume the fetal position together.
Check out this list of 9 gross things you can expect to do as a parent:
1. Clean a Dirty Pacifier””With Your Mouth
”I was a teenage mom and people already looked at my sideways wherever we went. Baby dropped his pacifier on public transport. I cleaned it off in my mouth before giving it back to him. When the pacifier landed on the floor of the bus I just figured it was better me than him, so I popped it in my mouth and then back into his!”
2.Deal With Strange Poop
I recently pulled the longest/ fattest piece of poop I’ve ever seen from my 2 1/2 year old. he was cry hysterically because he couldn’t push the poop out. I did this barehanded and saw the inner workings of of his poop shoot and I wish I had never seen that.
3. Do Gross Medical Stuff
My son has sensory issues, so he didn’t notice his toenail had grown in because it didn’t bother him until it was super bad. Nightly soaks of teenage boy feet and warm compresses to drain the puss. It was soooooo gross, and surprisingly bloody, too. He eventually healed enough for the podiatrist to remove it, which was also TERRIBLE.
4. Holy Diarrhea
I was at Newark Airport about to board a flight to Orlando (yes, Disney) when I take my three year old for a pre-flight trip to the potty. As we are leaving the bathroom the first time, he says he needs to go back. We don’t reach the toilets when, on the bathroom floor, he has epic, liquid diarrhea. His pants are gone, his socks and shoes are filled with diarrhea. Also, my pants are coated in his diarrhea. And the flight is boarding.
Mommy that I am, I immediately begin issuing orders to complete strangers in the bathroom to get me wet towels as more diarrhea pours out of my child. I get him wrapped in paper public bathroom towels as I get to my husband, who is then in line to board the flight, pull a spare set of clothing out of our carry on luggage, go back to the bathroom, get him changed, all in enough time to get ourselves on the flight. First thing I do is head to the airplane bathroom to peel off my diarrhea encrusted jeans and my phone falls out of the pocket, and in the cramped space, I step on it, and the phone screen shatters. It was merely the price we pay for motherhood.
As I assessed the damage, the shit covered clothes in a plastic bag en route to a destination with no washing machine (I took care of them in a hotel bath tub), the broken phone, and my own legs, streaked in feces, I looked around that airplane bathroom and honestly felt kinda like a superhero.
All that, and we still made our flight.
5.Deal With Rotten Food
A friend (frenemy?) gave me a high chair, though I quickly discovered she hadn’t cleaned it. It was coated in decaying food and the seat cover had probably never been washed. I was gagging the entire time because it was that gross. Cleaning up a mess from your kids might be barely tolerable, but cleaning up after someone else’s is absolutely disgusting.
6. Poopy Pants
My older son went through a round of antibiotic diarrhea that was not to be believed (I think I may have threatened our pediatrician if that was ever prescribed again), culminating in our daycare provider handing me a plastic bag with antibiotic-poop-crusted pants that had been sitting all day. Oh, and they were brand-new super-expensive ones that my mother-in-law had just given us. Yes, I washed them out. Yes, I gagged the entire time. AND to make it even better: the damn pants were *corduroy*– lots of horrible little channels for poop to reside.
7. More Gross Medical Stuff
Checking out and removing an embedded tick head from teenage son’s…. ahem… yeah. Down there. It was infected and he was terrified and had tried to take care of it on his own and refused to go to the doctor. Blood, pus and ick, but I got it out and he went to the doctor for antibiotics anyway.
8. Reflexively Eat Food Your Toddler Spits Out.
My toddler can be a picky eater and will open his mouth and then spit something out again if he doesn’t like it (e.g. chicken, potatoes, etc) and I’ve instinctively grabbed the food and put in my mouth instead of having it fall on the floor. Not my proudest moments.
9. Catch Your Toddler’s Vomit
My 1 year-old daughter and I were flying alone to my sis in law’s wedding shower and she randomly started throwing up. The first one went in her lap and mine and then I just held the blanket on her lap after that. Luckily she was quiet about it and the person sitting next to us pretended it wasn’t happening, as did I. When I arrived I threw that blanket in an airport trash can with no shame – I was pretty sure the flight attendants did not want that blanket back, haha!
