The Rumbling Stroller

Yesterday was Father's Day. I could post something sappy about how wonderful a father my husband is (and he is) but I feel that wouldn't be in keeping with the spirit of this blog. So I'll share a real-life harrowing dad story of when our daughter was first born.

We were still on maternity leave, and Greg was with me, so our little girl, Gwen, couldn't have been more than a week old at the time. Wanting to get out of the house, we decided to go to the swanky mall down the road a ways.

We were in Williams Sonoma (another testimony to how great Greg actually is - he was willing to tag along and do this shopping with me) Greg, me and Gwen with a friend of ours. I was pushing the stroller with Greg  behind me and our friend, Danny, behind Greg; all navigating through the narrow aisles housing unique and completely overpriced items that I would love to own but would, in actuality, rarely use.

Then something strange happened. The whole stroller started rumbling, as if an isolated earthquake was right in that local, accompanied by a rather rude growling-trumpety noise.

This went on for longer than you'd think.

Bewildered, I stared at Gwen, who looked back at me with a strange, newborn look on her face. Greg looked at me and asked, with a smirk on his face "What was THAT?!"
"I think it was Gwen!" I replied. This promoted grade-school snickering from Greg and a polite look-away from Danny.

"No really, I think it was her!"

"Honey, that was QUITE a noise for a newborn..."

But then Gwen, bless her, vindicated me in a way that I would soon regret: light brown liquid had begun seeping up her waist, had soaked through her blanket and was quickly on her way up to her chest. Danny, Greg and I all stared down with increasing horror at what was turning into an epic mess.

"What do we DO?!" I hissed at Greg. "We are in Williams-Freakin'-Sonoma. These things don't happen here!"

Greg, panic in his eyes, thought quickly and pointed heroically out towards the door. "TO THE BATHROOMS! QUICK!"

You know that scene in Lord of the Rings where the party is running through the Mines of Moria in an attempt to escape the Balrog? That was us. We flew through the mall, pushing Gwen faster than was probably safe, watching the brown stain ooze up her onsie well on its way to her neck at this point.

There was a family bathroom, thank God, and we rushed into it with our faithful friend, Danny, standing guard outside  ("You, shall not... PASS!!!!").

But this presented another problem. We had to get Gwen out of the stroller. This meant peeling away the blankets to reveal the damage underneath.

It was worse than you are probably capable of imagining.

I had no idea that much of anything could come out of Gwen's 7-pound little body.  As a new mother, I was also slightly surprised it hadn't killed her.

However, these thoughts were brief as my amazingly sensitive gag-reflex decided to kick in and I started retching violently. My gags, hacks and coughs echoed impressively around the tiled walls.

Greg, assessing the situation, quickly sprang into action. He unclipped Gwen, and removed her gently from the stroller. I set to work cleaning up the actual seat while Greg began the rather complicated task of removing Gwen's onesie, trying to pull it over her head without contaminating her face too badly. While sitting on the toilet, balancing her floppy little body. Once she was naked, I removed the diaper and set to trying to use wipes to clean her up.

It was as futile as using bubble wands to clean up the BP Oil Spill.

We eyed Gwen, dangling from Greg's arms.
We eyed the sink.
We calculated whether or not we would still be good parents if we rinsed our newborn daughter in the sink. We decided no one needed to know.

(Except, of course you, almost 2 years later)

And, we rinsed her off.

It wasn't pretty, she wasn't happy, but the Parenting Police didn't show up so I guess it turned out all right.

We dried her off with bathroom paper towels and quickly dressed her in a backup outfit. Flipping the blanket over and folding it strategically, we covered her back up in the fairly-clean stroller.

If Danny wondered why Gwen smelled so strongly of bathroom anti-bacterial soap, he never did say. But we did decide it was time to head home. Gwen was stressed, I was stressed, Greg was stressed and Danny needed a beer.

Parenting is very much a dual effort. When one of you is heaving violently, the other one needs to kick it up a notch and deal with something that the books didn't have the heart to address.

Eventually, you too, may have to deal with something like this (or you have already dealt with something like this) and all I can say is I hope you have a partner like mine who can step it up when needed and surprise you both.

Happy Father's Day Babe.