Thursday, February 09, 2006

"I poopin' a-din!"

Jonah's been trying to pooh for days now. Well, he isn't really trying to go, he's doing his level best not to go. He's holding it in. The boy will. not. go. It isn't constipation, I guess it's called "hoarding" in expert circles. He's actually hoarding pooh. In the Latin, poopus refusus. No matter what you call it, it's clear he has an issue with control. (Can a two-year-old have control issues already? He's so amiable in every other area.)

When the urge approaches, Jonah will stop in his tracks and bend in a contorted sort of freakshow fashion, legs and all. I hadn't realized you could bend sideways until I saw Jonah do it. He holds his shoulders back with his chin pressed down to his chest. He stares straight ahead and lets out a sort of long low mournful moan. Sounds like the letter "n" but with your mouth wide open and the guttural sound coming from the back of your throat. We say, "Jonah, what's the matter?" and he replies, "I poopin' a-din."

Another favorite laboring position is an against the wall & spread 'em affair, as if he's preparing to be patted down by the law. He stands with his hands against the wall, feet shoulder width apart, grunting and sweating with Herculean effort. We say, "Jonah, are you pooping?" and he squeezes out a breathy weary "Noo-oo-o."

Eventually the determination of the *ahem* "oncoming traffic" will overcome Jonah's resolve to staunch its progress, and the matter is taken care of without his consent. He's so alarmed, the look on his face at his sudden inability to control the world around him is so sad!

I've tried everything: suppositories, Vaseline, juice, fiber, everything. I even try to catch him during a labor pain and make him walk around or crouch, or better yet get him to the big boy potty in time for the main event! All to no avail. I just don't know how to make a boy go pooh, short of an enema (which I just can't bring myself to do). But something did finally do the trick. All I had to do was scrub the tub!

That's right. I scrubbed out the bathtub with my favorite cleanser, Lysol Basin Tub and Tile Cleaner. Man, I love that stuff. I made it nice and sparkly, even got the walls, although no one but me would notice that. Then I filled the squeaky clean tub with nice warm water, just on the verge of too warm. I poured in Jonah's favorite bubbles ("mmmm, Momma, dat fmells fwitty!") and, after wiping up the pee spot on the bathroom rug, I inserted the boy.

He played, he splashed, he had a jolly good time. The hot water, the bubbles, the mounds of tub toys, all did wonders for getting his mind off his "traffic" troubles. You should try it if you have a boy suffering from poopus refusus.

He'll poop in your clean tub in no time flat.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dellaina, are you psychic??? Or do our boys just have some kind of otherworldly fecal connection???

You aren't going to believe this...Daniel has been running a high fever for the past couple of days, and my SIL (a former RN who is married to a doctor) told me on the phone this morning to give Daniel a warm bath to try to bring his fever down.

I bathe Daniel in the kitchen sink, and as I was filling the sink, he started to pee. No big whoop. A little sprinkle in the bath never hurt no one, and besides, I rinse him from the tap. I shampooed him from his hair to his toes and no sooner did I finish rinsing him than he started to excrete long greenish ropes of poo right into his bathwater! He's NEVER done that before!

So, insert Twilight Zone theme here, but you could not have been timelier with your blog.

The only difference is mine isn't old enough to say "I poopin' a-din." Mine just says "Banana."

Krisitna R.

Adrianne said...

Very funny!!!

That is a story to tell his future wife and children!!

Anonymous said...

Dellaina, you are a BRILLIANT writer. Truly fantastic.

Anonymous said...

By the way, when I first started to read this one I thought it was about you trying to potty train him. But it's not even that! He just doesn't want to poo period? Since when? Wow.

Anonymous said...

LMAO Dellaina! You crack me up with your stories

Tara
May Mommy

Anonymous said...

I got to grab the pieces of poo as they were being extruded the other day- right into the freshly scrubbed bathtub- and plop them into the toilet that was behind me. Then I got to clean the tub again- I'm a Kaboom gal myself, but the second cleaning was with bleach. **sigh** the things we do in the course of a day.

^starshine said...

OMG! How freakin' hilarious!! My Incredible Z girl will go and hide behind the couch and then when I aske her what she is doin...she shuffles sideways to get past me like she is trying to secretly sneak her booty by me so I won't find out she is hordin' the pooh!

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