Scent of a Baby
We noticed that it has been a while since we examined the fecal offerings of our offspring. In our last post, we looked at one side of Penny’s illness. This week we dive into another, the backside.
While the Pedialyte certainly worked, rehydrating Penny and giving her a boost of energy, a secondary effect was a diaper that smelled, well, really really bad.
We took a look at a thesaurus to see if there is a word that encapsulates the smell in a single term. We started with “rank,” which returned: bad, dank, disagreeable, disgusting, evil-smelling, feculent, fetid, foul, funky, fusty, gamy, graveolent, gross, high, humid, loathsome, mephitic, moldy, musty, nasty, nauseating, noisome, noxious, obnoxious, off, offensive, olid, pungent, putrescent, putrid, rancid, reeking, repulsive, revolting, smelly, sour, stale, strong, strong-smelling, tainted, and turned.
Quite a lot to sort through. So being aficionados of The Princess Bride, we took a look at putrescent. The first definition, “becoming putrid; putrefying.” Yeah, that sounds about right. (Bonus points: see if you can work “graveolent” into your daily vocabulary).
Even still, this lexicon really cannot do justice to the plain foulness of Penny’s diaper deposits. Words truly fail us. Instead, let us paint you a picture:
Mom sits with Penny in the family room, cradling the sick baby in her lap when she feels a little rumble emit from baby’s bottom. A few moments later, dad says, “Oh! What is that—ugh! Is that from Penny?!”
Mom and dad get up to change Penny’s diaper and discover a soupy mixture akin to three-day-old-left-in-the-sun-to-rot-Bouillabaisse; not in texture, but in smell. The rotten fish smell is so rank that mom, who is thankfully a little less sensitive to smell, tries to cover her nose while cleaning up Penny’s bottom. Dad, whose olfactory sense is stronger, retches a few times at the scent then immediately wraps the heavy diaper in thick plastic and deposits it in the trashcan outside. (He thought about sneaking it into a neighbors trash can up the street to get it as far away as possible but figured that would just be mean.) Penny, who is feeling better at this point, lies on the changing table and smiles with glee at how funny mom and dad are.
posted by New Parent @ 4:32 PM
3 Comments:
The most deadly graveolent odor that ever existed came from an incident that happened in the back seat of a '70 maverick. It happened on a trip home from church in a car seat whereupon an angelic little boy dressed in his best outfit with his favorite lovey (handmade quilt) wrapped about began to spew vomit in a pumping stream. As soon as the maverick was stopped something began to seep from the insufficiently protective cloth diaper. Both of these smells together never really left the poor maverick (though we could wash it out of everything else) and the car was never really the same for us. So we traded it for a Nissan truck 10 years later, in spite of objections from our mechanic (who inexplicably loved this car--perhaps he never sat in the back seat!) Great Aunt Ann
That had to be Gary or Rhys, certainly not ME!
Oldest 2nd cousin born of Great Aunt Ann & Great Uncle Joe
We started noticing some truly stinky diapers after introducing formula into B's diet. The funny thing is our reactions are just like yours -- dad can hardly change the diaper for all his retching! He holds a clean diaper over his face sometimes, but his eyes water and he still gags. Meanwhile, yeah, I think it smells bad, but not *that* bad. But we've never tried Pedialyte yet. :)
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