Well, that should make for an interesting poop.

I understand that people don't want to hear about my baby's poops, and so I make a conscious effort not to post about them.  And you should therefore know that this post is not actually, in fact, about Leah's poop.  It's about the thing she ate that ultimately came out in her poop without having been the least bit digested.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Bad Parenting jury... my daughter ate a Band-Aid.

This is actually the end of the story, and nothing even remotely interesting happened after it, except that the next morning she did, in fact, poop out one tiny little bandage that had previously been at the tip of her left pointer finger.

Although I promised not to tell other people how to parent their kids, I can and will tell you that should your child ever consume a Band-Aid (or, in our case, Target store brand "flexible bandage"), it will likely not bother the child in the slightest and will go through the system unobtrusively in about 12 hours.

How I know this for a fact: Witness one lively, smiling, completely unharmed Leah Danielle Bush, who not only survived eating the bandage but also the wound that warranted its placement in the first place.

Leah's "first boo-boo" will go down in her personal history (read: "baby book") not as a self-inflicted wound, but rather as an accidental nip of her fingertip by her well-intentioned daddy as he tried to clip her fingernails.

(Aside: Up to this point, I had been biting them off, which sounds disgusting but is apparently a completely socially acceptable way of taking care of an infant's fingernails.  It's one of a bazillion things that people don't give a lot of thought to until parenthood is staring them dead in the face and some consideration has to be given to the fact that you will be completely responsible for tending to the activities of daily living of a very small and helpless being for the foreseeable future.  Tiny fingernails are scary.  Much scarier, in retrospect, than dirty diapers - because caring for them carries the potential for actual bodily harm.)

It bled a bit, and as we as first-time parents have no concept of how much blood an infant can lose before it becomes an Emergency, when it bled through several pieces of gauze and a first Band-Aid, we loaded her into the car and drove her to Urgent Care.

It should be noted that:

a) Leah giggled the whole way and
b) Her finger had stopped bleeding by the time we were in front of a medical professional.

Nonetheless, the doctor put a Band-Aid on the "wound" (though I suspect it was more to make Leah's parents feel better than to appease the actual patient) and told us to watch for infection.  But likely she would be fine.

Which she was, except that the trip to the clinic meant she had missed dinner, and so she was hungry and, at some point in the hour following our clinic visit, she sucked that little bandage right off her finger like it was a sugar-coated gumdrop, and down the gullet it went.

Truth be told, my first thought was that we should load her back in the car and take her back to Urgent Care, but no.  No no no.  I made myself give her a bottle and put her to bed, consumed foreign object and all - not because I wasn't actually worried.  I must've done a Breath Check every hour that night.

It was because, God help us, we are not going to become Those Parents.  I appreciate that Dean East Urgent Care indulged us once in six months; I was not going to press our luck by adding a second visit within  six hours.  Not for this.  Maybe for a fall down the stairs, but hopefully we won't ever have to put that to the test.

 

I did not actually fall off the face of the Earth.

Dear Jeff Vogel,

As much as I enjoy your wonderful book, I have spent the better part of the last two months questioning exactly how you managed to write it.  And I came to the conclusion that either a) you had a very understanding wife who said, "Oh, yes, by all means, spend two hours every night behind the locked door of your office and pay no attention to your screaming child; I'll take care of her," or 2) You gave Cordelia a very effective sedative every night.  If a) then your wife should get the credit for writing Poo Bomb, and if 2) can I please have some?

(There is an option D, which is that you are simply quicker, better and wittier than I am, but I would rather not acknowledge that as a possibility.)

-

As most of you have no doubt noticed, this blog went to shit at the end of May, when I returned to work.  In stark contrast with all reasonable sensibility, one does not, in fact, get more hours in the day when one procreates.  There are still only 24 or them, which must now be spread even thinner than they already were.  This either means less time for sleeping, less time for the child, or less time for enjoyable freetime writering-things.  As I quite enjoy sleeping, and as I sort of feel that letting Leah cry while I lock myself in a closet with my laptop for an hour would be bad form, my freetime has suffered considerably.

Fortunately, now five months old, Leah has what can probably be called a semi-regular, mostly consistent bedtime routine that has her asleep by 8:00 each night, which means I may have earned some of that freetime back, if I'm not too ungodly exhausted to do anything but go to sleep myself.

Rather than backtrack, I'm simply going to pick up the ball from this point, because it's likely that trying to rehash everything that's happened since May would be a complete shitshow.

Instead, you should all know this: I have the best baby ever.

There.  I said it.  I have a GOOD BABY, and I would really like to tattoo it on my forehead or get a T-shirt for every day of the week proclaiming just how incredibly awesome my child is*.

When I returned to work, Leah started day care.  When Leah started day care, she became a social butterfly.  She has no fewer than three little boyfriends, all of whom are adorable and - as I've told her many times - all of whom have cooties.  She has found her voice and progressed to uncontrollable inflection, and if you want an opinion on just about anything, she will give it to you (and then grunt at you when you say things like, "Oh really?" or, "Is that so?")

I can only conclude that my returning to work brought her out of her shell as she was exposed to the idea that she is not, in fact, the only baby in the universe, and there might just be someone out there who understands the language she speaks.

She is well-behaved in public unless she's hungry or needs to have her diaper changed, which I can totally understand, because I'm an absolute bitch if I haven't eaten and, hey.  Who among us doesn't like to have a nice clean behind?  The bottom line is, with a few noted exceptions, we don't have to fear taking her out in public or leaving her home with a baby-sitter.

Stay tuned for the latter six months of her first year, when I promise to try to update at least monthly.

"Try."  Nice word, isn't it?








*This opinion is one part Proud Mama Syndrome and two parts I've Been Told I'm a Lucky Bitch By The Whole World.