After four months or so, baby will start eating solid foods and its excrement will change. Less buttery, more foody. More solid. More shitty, in truth. And it will change colour each day, depending on what Junior has been eating. Lots of carrots = orange poo. If baby starts eating meat, the shit becomes as foul and revolting as any adult's. Worse, in some ways, because adult shit rarely gets under your fingernails.
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| Baby Solid Food Poop |
But Mother Nature is a cunning old bird. By the time baby is ingesting solids, you should be so used to changing nappies that you can take the vile odours in your stride. If we had to deal with them at birth, no one would ever change a nappy. Some men don't. Having avoided changing one when the shit smelled of nothing, they find it impossible to make the great leap when it starts smelling of Whiskas Supermeat.
The learning curve is gentle in the early weeks, but by six to eight months it is the north face of the Eiger. And by then a man who cannot change a nappy is a pitiful figure, liable to be held in contempt by all humanity. When a well-known media chef revealed on television that he had never changed a nappy, the audience hissed. He thought he had done something clever; they thought he was a wuss. He was astounded. He thought all the men, at least, would admire and respect his stance. But he had spent too much time in restaurant kitchens terrorizing minions. Without him realizing it, the parameters of machismo had changed. These days, Real Men Wipe Arses.
When you start wiping, you do so with forensic care and a huge amount of kit. Midwives, health visitors and other well informed busybodies will advise that you need the following: a couple of clean nappies; some cotton wool (to clean off the poo); a bowl of warm water (to rinse cotton wool in); a towel (to dry baby's precious arse); a box of wet wipes (to clean it again, this time properly); some talcum powder (to powder precious arse); some zinc barrier cream (to protect arse from nappy rash); kitchen roll (to mop up the terrible atom you have just made); foul-perfumed nappy bags (to put dirty nappy in); three toys and four cloth books to distract baby with; large drink for Daddy to calm nerves. All of which takes so long that baby has probably done another load, so you have to start again straight away.
Two weeks later most of this stuff is in the bathroom somewhere and forgotten. All you really need are the nappies, the wet wipes, a couple of bits of kitchen roll for emergencies and the vital barrier cream. For parents of small babies Sudocrem will become as familiar a word as lunch, dinner or divorce. It's marvelous stuff. It protects against nappy rash, and because it is antiseptic, it cures nappy rash if you forgot to put it on last time. And by now you will be able to change a nappy, even one with crap dripping out of it, in two minutes or less. While talking on the phone and drinking a cup of tea. It couldn't be easier.
(Soon you will even be able to tell when your baby is pushing one out. The early buttery poos make wonderful deafening farty noises, but seem to require little effort on the part of baby. But once the solids kick in, baby begins to strain and stretch, grunting slightly as its eyes cross and bulge with the effort of it all. When it's all over, a look of sublime satisfaction crosses baby's face. If you ever see anything funnier in your life you will be very lucky.) To find out more, you can check out Baby Solid Food Poop.