One Man and his obsession with…
I have a confession to make.
Sad but true, I have succumbed to the cult of fecophilia. I am not the first parent and I know that I certainly will not be the last to fall victim to this terrible obsession. The very fact that I have chosen to even blog about this openly is proof of the powerful forces at work here. I’m not even sure how it happened. I don’t recall any one specific tipping point. It was more of a gradual evolution (or devolution in this case).
I’m going to tell you all something that you may not want to hear, but I’m doing it to illustrate just how far into the abyss I have slipped.
My wife and I have been together for nearly ten years now and with the sole exception of an unfortunate incident (on my part) involving WAY TOO MUCH alcohol on my 26th birthday, we have NEVER seen each other go to the bathroom. There I said it.
I have made mention of this fact to close friends in the past and to co-workers in the ER during those rare 4 a.m. lulls in patient load, and the majority of them have laughed at me and said, “What’s the big deal? Everybody poops.” While I acknowledge this physiological understatement, I maintain that stalls have walls for a reason. I think it is a private thing and I do not see a reason to turn the event into a spectator sport. To this day, whenever my wife wants to get me out of the bathroom (i.e., when we’re getting ready for bed) all she has to do is make the motion like she’s going to “drop trou” and I’m outta there with the same vigor as a dog running on linoleum.
I’d say that the first cracks started to form when my daughter was born. I’m a proud modern dad. This means that in addition to taking my daughter everywhere (unescorted by the mother-ship) I also change a lot of diapers. In the beginning, when we were first out of the hospital and my wife was still recovering from the C-section, I would go get my daughter, change her diaper and then bring her to momma for the mid-night breastfeed. Then my wife and I started to have very weird conversations such as “Hey look, she’s done with that icky sticky neonate meconium poop.” - or- “Make sure you use lots of Balmex, that yellow seedy breast fed baby poo is terrible for her bottom.” I recall conversations about just how long to wait before calling the pediatrician because it had been TWO WHOLE DAYS without any poo.
Over time, I began to feel like that guy in The Last Emperor with the world’s worst job. For those of you who don’t recall the movie, there a scene where the young emperor is literally seated on the royal “throne” doing his “royal business” into a copper pot. After he’s done, this unfortunate gentleman has to inspect the consistency of the royal droppings before making recommendations to the royal chef about what to prepare for that day’s meals. Without even consciously realizing it I also began to inspect and adjust her “banana-to-rice cereal” ratio according to her last few diapers.
And so it was for many months.
A few weeks ago we decided that McKenna was ready for potty training. We even came up with a little song to sing with each trip to the potty. It goes - “Poopies on the potty and NOT in the pants.” That’s it. One verse, no chorus, but it works. Truth be told, it’s not even 100% original. It’s a variation on a friend’s “Peepee on the potty and not on the floor” song.
After a few early-on successes with peeing on the potty, we ran out and made a big deal of getting her very own “big girl potty”. And let me tell you, this thing has all the bells and whistles. First of all it sings to you. It knows when you are lifting and closing the lid and best of all, just like my Dewalt compound miter saw it’s got LASERS. Seriously, it shoots a laser beam across the pot so that when the beam is broken by………well, you know………. it starts singing a celebratory song about how big and smart you are. Fisher Price is very smart. If you want to get dads involved in potty training, mix a laser in there somehow.
Last weekend, I was hanging out in the living room with my brother and McKenna when she grabbed her pants and said, “Poopies on da potty.” So, I grabbed her up in my arms, ran up the stairs and into her bathroom. SUCCESS! My wife was at work, so without a second thought, I snapped a quick picture with my phone and sent it to her. Here’s the funny part though, and this is how I know I am not alone with this whole fecophilia issue, my wife actually cried when she got the picture message. In her defense, she is pregnant and hormonal, and I would have felt a similar sense of loss had I not been there.
Recently, friends of ours in Rhode Island, Lisa and Jack, had a shower for their upcoming baby. We could not attend because we were on vacation in Maryland, but we made sure to send along a gift. Yup, you guessed it, we sent them a diaper genie and some refills. Not long after, we received a nice thank you card from them that pointed out that they were not at all surprised that we had chosen that particular gift off of their registry since I was the unofficial “King of the Code Brown” when we worked together in the Newport ER.
Anyway, that’s how it happened. That’s how a man who was decidedly anti-spectator became not only a spectator, but a fan of the whole bathroom experience.
PS - For the record, I still fly solo and will not be my wife’s co-pilot, if you catch my meaning.
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