Then, holding up the scissors, she took a deep breath and blew it out again slowly. “Okay, let’s do this.”
We’d had a stressful day, and it had been an emotional tornado, so ending it like this was almost hilarious… well, if I didn’t have baby diarrhea down my chest it would have been. I’d laugh about it later, like in ten years.
Holding Liv slightly away from me, I held her still while Jose made the cuts. “You enjoying yourself, princess?” When she giggled and went to put her hand in her mouth I panicked. “Maybe wait for us to make sure it’s clean before you do that,” I begged, getting another giggle from her in response. And then she did something that almost made me lose whatever control I was barely holding onto – she held out her hand to pat my cheek. “I’m begging you, Liv, don’t.”
“What’s she doing?” Jose asked from underneath the bowels of hell.
“She went to chew her hand, but I don’t know if it’s clean or not, so I told her not to,” I relayed, desperately trying to dodge the hand still reaching for me. “Now she’s trying to pat my face with the hand.”
Just then, Jose stood back up and started to peel the bodysuit off Liv’s shoulders, distracting Liv from her quest. That should have been ok – and it would have been – except not all the blowout had leaked out of where it had been caught against the material, meaning that when the bodysuit was removed, it had the freedom to fall. I didn’t see it, but I sure as hell heard it. “Oh my God, that’s disgusting!” Jose gulped, reaching for the tabs on Liv’s diaper and undoing them, letting it drop on top of the garbage bag, too. “Okay, I just need to cut yours, and then I’ll take her to the bathroom to clean off. Can you move her to the side so I can get to you?”
I didn’t need to be told twice, so I moved Liv out the way and closed my eyes. I wasn’t a stranger to gross stuff, hell I did piercings and tattoos for a living, but this was totally outside of my comfort zone and my stomach was reacting violently to it. I didn’t want to hear liquid poop coming out of anyone, not even the beautiful baby in my hands. In fact, I didn’t want to ever discuss poop, it was a private process that everyone did and should stay that way. This was really testing the control I had on my gag reflex so that I didn’t add the burrito I’d enjoyed so much tonight to the mess on the floor. “Can we hurry?” I croaked, groaning when I felt how close to my chin she was with the scissors. Then, I heard the sweet, sweet words of freedom. “Done, now pass her to me.”
I was stripping the second she had Liv securely in her hands, carefully pulling one arm out of a sleeve, and then the other. A quick look down confirmed my jeans hadn’t escaped the brown tides either, so I unzipped them, kicked my shoes off, and ran for the shower.
My goal was to sterilize myself, and with the temperature of the water on full heat, it’s fair to say I achieved it.Jose
I was used to the fact that whenever people were around, they wanted to hold Liv. It bothered me when she was a newborn, but so long as I knew the person and trusted them, I was ok with it now. I’d already had quite a few diaper blowouts happen that had ended up on me, and those things weren’t nice at all, so I felt bad for Ellis. She hadn’t just gotten a little bit on him, it was a full covering down to his shoes.
Holding her under the spray of the shower, I narrowed my eyes when she burst out laughing. “Proud of yourself, aren’t you?” After a couple of minutes, I’d gotten rid of a majority of the visible poop, so I could get down to the task of properly washing her – something that wasn’t going to be easy with me still in my clothes. Seeing as how there was nothing I could do about it, though, I just sighed and resigned myself to the fact I was going to get soaked, and went with it.
Picking up a bottle of her baby shower gel, I held her in one arm and poured with the other. Parenting was a juggling act with everything you did, and it took time to learn how to juggle, but I was getting there. That said, holding a slippery and wet baby while you squeezed shower gel from a bottle with your other hand wasn’t easy, but I got there with no mishaps, thankfully. Giving her a good scrub and doing a check to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, I rinsed her off and held her up in front of me.