Unglamorous Adventures in Parenting: My Baby Ate His Poop!

I’ve been a parent for 18 years and had some unglamorous moments. I’ve been vomited on, pooped on and peed on — but what happened when my youngest was 13 months old was definitely the worst. This was written for BabyCenter back in 2012 and they have since taken the post down. I was not compensated for this.

WARNING: If you happen to be eating something, now would be the time to put it down.

After our family dinner tonight, my 13-month-old, who is just moving from purees to solids, was finishing up his dinner of steamed carrots, turkey and Cheerios (all cut up of course) in his high chair.My husband was in the process of bathing our two older kids (ages 6 and 3 1/2), when I noticed green residue around my smiling baby’s mouth.
That’s odd, I thought — I didn’t serve him anything green for dinner. It looked kind of like the spinach baby food he had had for lunch.

My mind recoiled in horror!

I ran over and peered into the seat area of the highchair and saw a MAJOR diaper blow out, and S was eating his poop!

Photo Credit: Image by Richard Reid via Pixabay

Arggh … I quickly got him out of the high chair, ran over to my kitchen sink. After realizing I did not want to bathe him there, I ran him into our bathroom, yelling at my husband to get the kids out of the tub, “We’ve got a code red here!”

When my husband realized what was happening he quickly grabbed the two older kids out of the bath and put our Flexibath baby tub in the big tub so I could get to work on cleaning him off. The baby was still in great spirits, but my mind was racing, wondering whether or not he could get sick from eating fecal matter.

After he was spotless, I dressed him and called my sister-in-law, who’s a doctor, for advice. She said that the only consequence could be diarrhea, but if he also got a fever, call my doctor. She also told me to give him milk or water to flush his system out of little (since I am not sure how much he ate).

So, after I cleaned up and the other kids went to bed, I gave the baby a bottle. He was still in great spirits.

One load of laundry (which I did) and a good tub cleaning (which my husband did) later, all was quiet in our house. Definitely the grossest moment of my life!