The poo has landed

One of those big changes in life that come with parenthood is the ease with which you talk about and deal with poo. It’s not unusual to get covered in the stuff, you discuss its consistency, clean up the product of a caught-short potty trainer with whatever is it hand, be it leaves, post-its or Co-op receipts and, of course, blog about it.

For the past week, we have been waiting for Eleanor to poo. She did her meconium poos fine, so we knew that she had the mechanism to do one. But she had not done a proper poo yet. Combined with her having lost over 13% of her birth weight within the first week (over 15% and they have to refer to the paediatricians), this was rather worrying, though she was producing plenty of wet nappies and was very well in herself. She has now put on some weight, after changing her feeds to a combination of expressed breast milk (as much as I can produce) topped up with formula (a whole other, very emotional story, which I will go into soon), and the midwife assured us that she would poo. Once she was getting enough milk into her, it would just be a matter of time.

And lo and behold, she just did poo. Lots and lots. Not quite an explosive, leak-everywhere poo, but pretty impressive nonetheless. I have never been so happy to mop up runny brown goop with cotton wool and warm water.

So, has a poo ever made you incredibly happy?