Once, I wrote about how disgusting babies were.
Newborn eye gunk? Ew.
Baby hair? Blegh!
Skin folds? *hork*
The poop? I’d take a breast milk poop over a solid food poop any day.
A year in — guess what?
Babies are still disgusting.
Just even more so.
I have more than 1,500 pictures of my son being cute — of course the number is bigger since my throwback post. I do not, however, have many pictures of my son being disgusting, which is his natural state.
Still.
Because I’m covered in or trying to contain whatever disgusting thing just happened.
Still.
Here are a few more truly disgusting things about babies that I’ve discovered since becoming a parent:
New and exciting spit up varieties
When my son was a newborn and up to about eight weeks old, he had terrible reflux — not bad enough that he needed medical attention, but just bad enough that it made him a tiny baby barf machine.
And barf he did.
A year later, he rarely spits up. But when he does, he spits up new things. Like peas.
And it’s disgusting.
SO MUCH MORE DROOL
Drool in quantities fit to fill an Olympic swimming pool. He wasn’t cutting teeth at 3 months old, and he wasn’t cutting teeth at 7 months old, but he drooled enough to show a mouth full of enamel.
A year later, he’s got eight teeth and slobber strings for days.
And it’s disgusting.
Dirty finger nails
If I hand something to my son, he instinctually puts it in his mouth. Obviously, if I’ve given him something, it’s safe to eat.
So he eats it. Or he tries to eat it. Lego Duplos do not a meal make.
Either way, it’s in his mouth. Along with his fingers. And so his fingernails. Drool and dirt combine under those delicate scratchers to create a thick, stinky clog of I don’t want to know what.
AND HE’S MOBILE. Toddling about. So he encounters a lot of dirt.
And it’s disgusting.
Even more toe cheese
My 3-month-old son built up nasty toe cheese from not doing anything or going anywhere.
My 7-month-old son built up nasty toe cheese from doing things and crawling places, mixing it with animal fur he picked up along the way.
A year later, nearly always sock-footed, my son builds up some stinking fuzz wads of nasty in those toes, and I will never understand it.
This does not happen to me.
This does not happen to my husband.
It only happens to the baby.
And it’s disgusting.
“Toe floaties”
Toe cheese scrubbed loose and afloat in the bathtub. Term courtesy of my husband.
Legit adult poop
We encountered a poop or two of epic proportions before my son started solid foods. Some blowouts. Some blowups.
Fairly minor.
Not one of them could have prepared us for the poop that came after his first meal of carrots.
That is a grown-up poop!
People warned me that it would get worse, but no one told me it would be a grown-up poop! That belongs in a toilet, not a diaper.
And it’s disgusting.
There is no escape from the nasty that is a baby, a toddler or, I expect, an adolescent. I’m certainly not looking forward to his teenager years.
I shudder at the thought.
Babies are gross, greasy, crusty little dirt monsters — and I don’t see it getting any cleaner in the foreseeable future.
My advice to you should you choose to engage in ensuring the livelihood of one of these dirty little demons: Register for bibs. Lots of bibs. You need them. It’s OK to have 3 million of them.
They won’t all make it.
