My wife and I hold an impromptu poo party for our baby

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/may/09/my-wife-and-i-hold-impromptu-poo-party-for-baby

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Since this column began, I’ve done my best to avoid discussing the intricacies of my son’s bowel movements with you. It’s Saturday morning, after all. You might recently have eaten a chicken tikka. Or some banana yoghurt. Or just loads and loads of rancid mustard off a giant sodden sanitary towel. Who knows? You’re good people, and I must be sensitive to that.

But this is an exception. Because, for the past fortnight, my entire life has revolved around poo. Specifically a lack of poo, swiftly followed by a very sudden proliferation of it. Our baby has constipation, and it’s all I can talk about.

I won’t go into too much detail about the ins and outs – actually, that’s a lie, because I’m about to go into a genuinely horrible level of detail about the outs – but the boy has been clogged up with reflux medication, and is averaging about one poo every four days.

With each successive poo-less day, he gets a little more restless, a little more pink-faced, a little more prone to vomiting. It’s horrible to see him struggle like this. We spend our evenings praying that the poo fairy will fly in through our window and make everything better, presumably with a vacuum cleaner and some sort of disposable plastic sheeting. But then it comes. Last week, I was working in another room when I heard three distinct noises. The first was a sub-bass pulse, like you hear in superhero movie trailers. The next was a giggle.

The last noise I heard was my wife screaming in horror. Our baby had broken his duck, and he’d broken it all over the place. Out of his bum, out of his nappy and through every available hole in his babygrow. I didn’t see it happen but, as a guide, I like to imagine Iron Man taking off, or a Doctor Who regeneration.

As my wife cleaned up the mess, she kept mumbling “I’m so proud of you” to our son. And I completely get it. Each time he has pooed since then, we have found ourselves having an impromptu little poo party. I’ve even thought about buying a big bell to clang whenever he forces out a dump, like burger restaurants do whenever anyone leaves a big tip.

The pride I feel about this knows no bounds, to the extent that I recently found myself describing the colour and consistency of his motions to about half a dozen of my horrified colleagues in such extreme detail that I’ll probably never get invited back to the office.

I realise how weird this sounds. But then I am also starting to realise that parenthood doesn’t translate very well. It’s easy to communicate the negative aspects of being a dad – the tiredness, the stains, the inability to watch more than three uninterrupted minutes of Mad Men at once – because they are universal and quantifiable. Frustration is an easy sell.

The positive aspects are much harder to get across. If someone had told me six months ago that one of my favourite things would involve watching the wave of relief rush across my son’s face after he goes to the toilet on himself, I’d have punched them square in the face. Same if they had told me that I would brim with joy whenever he figured out a new type of scream in the middle of a tantrum.

I’m watching the formation of a person, and that’s too enormous a thing to put across glibly. It’s messy and it’s hilarious and it’s secure and it’s complete. It’s magic. It stinks of putrid butter but, God, it’s magic.

@stuheritage