I'll save the curious anthropology of hospital labor and delivery units and how they relate to department store makeup counters for another post. Rather, I want to expand on the odd parental obsession with diapers and the contents thereof. I mean, of all the pointless exclamations of pride, the fact that one's squealing newborn spawn has shat his diapers, which, considering that philosophers (or at least gastroenterologists) have claimed that man is but an alimentary tube with eyes, is hardly a reason to claim exceptionalism. But what the bastards who knew (notice a theme?) hadn't told you is that the reason all of these sleepless mothers and fathers are so enraptured by urine-soaked nappies is that rather than being a boringly quotidian point of pride, those diapers can be a matter of life and death.
What they tell you is that every additional day of life should mean one extra soiled loincloth, so, according to this scheme: day one, one diaper; day two, two diapers; day three, three diapers; and cetera for the first week, until your child makes about 8 shit/piss diapers a day. What they don't tell you is what it means if your child, like ours, had 8 meconium (mec is that thick, black slurry that newborns produce that stands in for the feces produced from digested food) diapers the first day with perhaps one urine. And then doesn't follow the prescribed schedule of one added each day. And although the doctors and nurses don't seem quite unhappy about it, they use that weird phrase, "well, we'll just keep an eye on it," which has the felicitous economy of using a minimum of extra letters but may sound to a worried, sleep-deprived parent either that nothing's wrong but we're talking about it as though it is, or alternatively, your child is being driven off a metaphorical health-cliff like the Republicans did to the economy while the Democrats watch, waving as the car goes over. Well, (literal) shit.
The day of our hoped-for discharge finally rolled around, and at that point no one's showered, no one's changed their adult nappies, unwashed hair all thick and oily like a college rastafarian's, and we are ready to go home with our new bundle of joy. At that point, our child still hasn't made a urine or even meconium diaper since that first day, and we'd only just learned, early that morning from the night shift nurse, some more pro-tips to finally begin to understand how to get the proper latch on the nipple, meaning only since early that morning had our child, like a wall-street banker, been receiving rich reward for all of the sucking that she'd been doing. On our discharge from the hospital, the parting shot from the well-meaning pediatrics intern was, "just be sure to keep an eye on your baby's wet diapers - although, of course, you're a doctor and all, so I don't have to say that!" even though you did, you cruel bitch.
Yes, I'm a doctor, not only am I a doctor, I'm an attending physician in emergency medicine, a faculty member in a school of medicine's department of emergency medicine, meaning not only do I practice it, I teach others how to do it. And there have been countless nights filled with frazzled parents of newborns with whom I've sat and counseled and examined and ultimately deemed their child, thankfully normal.
My point being that when I'm doing my job, I know this stuff. Being on the receiving end of it, only further clouded by the paranoia of knowing what could go medically horribly and catastrophically wrong, made it perhaps worse. Good god - I just noticed that our baby's lips are a little chapped-appearing, is she dehydrated and I haven't noticed? Her skin turgor is normal, what about her capillary refill? Why hadn't she made another wet diaper today, anyway? We were supposed to go home...
And then, magically, we were discharged home, we had good follow-up the day after next, the baby appeared well, and after all, we were given the injunction to be sure to keep an eye on it. That first evening home was spent being spent, the group of us huddled and shakily moving from one thing to the next, one feeding to another. The diapers they gave us at the hospital had a color-change indicator that would turn from yellow to green in the event of a urine (event! Excretion has become an event!), and as the late afternoon turned into evening and then into night, we'd examine the yellow line which remained unironically so feeding after feeding after feeding, the worry that I was killing our child with dehydration building, that perhaps I shouldn't have pressed so hard for discharge and instead had remained in the hospital, hair turning into dreadlocks a small, small price to pay for the life of our daughter.
And it was so even this morning when we went to feed her again. Sighing, we decided to change her diaper anyway as it had been on for a day. My wife's mother and sister, who are visiting and shouldering the bulk of the burden of keeping house while my wife recuperates and feeds our child and I blog, were at our bedside telling us of their plans while this changing was occurring. The old diaper was off, every part of her nether bits freshly and sadly cleaned of nothing, when, miracle of miracles, my beautiful child peed into the air, all of us crowing delightedly at the yellow stream of wellness and non-dehydration and sweet vindication for being home and above all, proving that this diaper meant life and death, and this time, life won! We were so proud of our little one's dirty deed, shitless this time but we were no longer pissing in the wind, sweet victory!
ADDENDUM/POST-SCRIPTUM: This evening, after another long day of clean diapers, whilst changing a mec-streaked one I had the fortune of having my child alternate between stooling and urinating on the chux pad I'd set below her, followed by her sharting in my face. This shit's getting old...
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| Why yes, that is a baby in my shirt. But I am happy to see you - how'dja know? |
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