Another Use for Saran Wrap

You know those days when you go to change your daughter's diaper and instead of the mustardy poo you're expecting to find, you find a big old glob of reddish brown mucousy stuff?

No? Yeah, so imagine my HORROR at nineish this morning when I confronted aforementioned glob. I said all sorts of things I have forbidden myself to say on this blog, then called the doctor's office.

Now, Jeffrey and River's doctor is the only pediatrician in town and he is wonderful and I love him. But so does eeeevrybody else in town and getting an appointment on the fly is about as easy as scoring a Nobel Peace Prize in Physics. But after a bit of waiting and dithering, I got a call to get River in to the office at 10:45 and they'd fit me in. Ish. I contemplated a shower, discarded the idea, smoojed the mascara from yesterday up into a semblance of eyeliner, and took off.

The office was as full as it usually is: a grandaddy with a grandson who kept trying to smack the 55-day-old baby (side note: a woman with four kids knows how many days old her baby is? I am falling behind on the Ubermommy track) there with his mommy, and a teenage girl with her mother and baby. The teenager's baby was younger and larger than River and Grandmama kept talking about how little River was. It made me feel like I was losing some important race and I wanted to jump over there and deliver a lecture about how slippers were not appropriate footwear for doctor's visits, but I was wearing yesterday's mascara as eyeliner, so I kept my mouth shut.

We met with the doctor, he noted that her weight gain was slowing down, he digitally manipulated her bowels to get a poo sample (which left River and I both sweaty and shaking, although I let River do the crying because I try not to sob in front of my pediatrician), he said he wanted to culture her to determine things about rotoviruses and viruses versus bacteria and anemia and finally I just asked him how much I should worry and he said, "Worry just a little bit, Mama." I like the doctor because he calls me Mama.

So then I went out and there was some kind of problem with the tube holding my daughter's manually expressed poo because it wasn't the kind of tube my HMO-imposed lab used and where were those tubes? and the angry nurse who NOBODY likes started getting all, "Oh, no he DI-INT get any new tubes. I've been here for a year now." and the other nurses were like, "Um, yes. We got new tubes." And she was like, ""Take it up with HIM, then." and slammed doors and I was just sitting there with my sore-bottomed daughter thinking how unprofessional the whole thing was. Finally, the receptionist told me to pick up Jeffrey at school and go home and they'd call me when the tube/lab issue was resolved.

Okay. I did this and I got the call and then I went to the doctor's office and they told me--get ready-- that the tube my doctor used to collect River's poo was not the right tube and I should use this to collect it myself and they handed me a clear plastic bag with a U-shaped piece of foam on it. Um.

The receptionist said, "Try to line the hole up with her...uh...you know...her..." And I was thinking, "Lady, you work at a pediatrician's office. Surely the word 'rectum' comes up quite a bit." But I said the word for her, looked skeptically at the bag, and headed home. Attaching the bag to my daughter's tushy was not the oddest thing I've ever done, but it was pretty weird. She thought it was hilllaaaaarious and waggled her heiny all over the place in glee as I stuck and unstuck the foam trying to get the proper poo-catching angle. Then I waited.

Do you know how nerve-wracking it is to sit around waiting to see if the seal on your daughter's poo-catching bag is capable of holding back the tide? Very. In case you were wondering. I waited and waited and finally River alerted me to a poo as she was finishing up her 85th feed of the day. I jumped up and scurried toward her bedroom, holding her aloft like I was Kunte Kinte's dad and...uh...she was Kunte Kinte. Anyway, I got to the nursery and....

Y'all. Oh, dear Filing Cabinet at the mess. The seal did not hold. I repeat: THE SEAL DID NOT HOLD. I mean, there was a bit of poo in the bag, but the bulk of the poo was in the diaper or...shudder...under the frickin' foam U-shaped thingy. Gross. GROSS, I tell you. And she was just grinning at my exclamations of dismay. And then I did what I had to do and took the little plastic shovelly thing attached to the Lab-Sanctioned Tube and started...shudder...scraping the diaper and my girl's bottom and the U-shaped thingy to get enough poo to reach the required- poo-level-line on the Lab-Sanctioned Tube. And then...River started pooing again. I yelled, "Wait, WAIT!" while trying to get the bag under her butt (yes, I know the tube was a better option, but I was a little freaked out at the time), but then she started crying because the poo hurt from her experience at the doctor's office and there I was, standing in front of my poo-smeared daughter, crying with her while holding a plastic poo-smeared bag and a poo-smeared miniature shovel. This is real parenting, people. In any case, I missed the secondary poo and wound up...shudder...squeezing poo out of the foam U-shaped thingy and stealing a bit from an earlier diaper and finally just saying to myself, "I can't deal with any more poo right now, okay? Enough is efrickingnough."

So I loaded up Jeffrey and River and the poo-filled Lab-Sanctioned tube and we drove to the lab in the next town over, where the phlebotomist from my pregnancy who was always so kind to me works. And she looked at the lab order and the tube and...OH MY FILING CABINET, people, the tube they've given me is not the right tube for one of the orders.

Are. You. Kidding. Me?

The nice lady said, "Oh, here's another tube, you can get a sample tonight."

Listen, y'all. Listen. I am not a professional poo-catcher. I mean, isn't there a part of medical training that teaches you to catch poo? Because I didn't get that training. Because I'm an ENGLISH MAJOR. And while I love my babies and even love their poo because it is a part of them and was once food that nourished them, I can only go so far with my daily contact with poo. And I've met my poo-contact requirement for the month.

I suppose that my consternation showed, because the nice phlebotomist said, "Oh, you know what you can do?"

Here's where the title comes in.

"You can use Saran Wrap as a diaper liner to catch the sample."

I know. I KNOW. I almost fell over, too. And I'm almost ashamed to admit that I actually used the Saran Wrap as a diaper liner to catch the sample before realizing that my poor baby was crying because...HELLO? She had been seized with a sudden and terrible fear that her butt was being mistaken for leftover pork chops and seriously, her butt had been abused enough today and, hey, Mom. TAKE THE PLASTIC OFF MY BUTT.

Look, I got a sample. There was more mess and more tiny shovels and more poo everywhere, but by golly, there is a Lab-Sanctioned tube o' poo hanging out in my fridge next to the eggs.

I did not use the Saran Wrap for the poo-collection. Heaven help me, I just couldn't do it.