the squibix family blog

From the beginning of his life, Zion was a baby who only POOPED every few days. But in between he would (poop) tiny little amounts all the time. Every wet diaper had a (poopy) smear, but no big as the POOP which sometimes emerged only with grunting and hiding in a corner. Still, up to age two the difficulty rarely bothered him, and berries seemed to make a healthy difference. I figured I was doing my best and the streaking would stop once he stopped wearing diapers.

Fast forward to potty training. This transition was difficult. Zion is stubborn and he doesn't like being told what to do. It wouldn't be a stretch to say he views his life in our family as some sort of perpetual fight club. So if I tell him to sit on the potty, he hits me. With Zion, the first rule of potty training is WE DO NOT TALK ABOUT POTTY TRAINING.

He decided he didn't like to poop in the potty, so although he was toilet trained for pee pretty early he waited until his overnight diaper to drop one. When we found out his diaper was dry all night (but filled with poop ten minutes into the morning) we stopped diapers all together. This was easier for me because I stopped getting punched in the morning when I said, "It's time to take off your diaper."

But on Zion it was considerably harder.

Harder, get it? That's another joke about poop. Let's laugh at the fact that my child is now constantly constipated.

The past few months have seen Zion saving his POOPS for once or twice a week, and then (pooping) in his undies all the frigging time. Sometimes he goes through five pairs of pants in one day. When I see some spot on my floor or furniture, I look at it sideways and think, "Is this dirt, chocolate, or poop?"

Kind of like a fun gameshow except ending with considerable more wet rags.

The kicker though, (in addition to Zion himself) is that Zion won't eat when he's all stopped up. So he doesn't eat, he's tired and grumpy, and at his last physical the doctor noted that he's dropped down to first percentile for weight.

I explained to the doctor about his POOP and (poops).

"Some kids do this for emotional reasons," the pediatrician said, "but I'd try giving him a stool softener and a laxative to get a clean start."

So last weekend I started the recommended stool softener once a day. One cap full of MiraLAX mixed in with chocolate milk. Unfortuantely, Zion wouldn't drink more than two sips of his chocolate milk, or anything for that matter, so I kept mixing more MiraLAX with more liquids in the hopes that Zion would consume some.

Two days went by with no POOP. On Monday morning Harvey called me into the bathroom.

"I don't feel sick," he started, "but I think I may be sick. Because my poop smells like it does when I'm sick."

"Is it all watery?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Then stop finishing Zion's chocolate milk for him."

On Tuesday I gave Zion a chocolate laxative chew. He didn't poop. On Wednesday I gave him another one.

I was starting to think that Zion had bowels of steel. That maybe he was really and truly holding the universe together with his anal sphincter.

Then the medicine caught up to him and the universe fell appart.

On Thursday Zion pooped his pants while we were out at the Museum of Science. Twice. Then we came home and he pooped his pants immediately upon entering the house. I bent down to take off his shoes and they were covered in poop. That was the first of something like twenty poop explosions. He'd fought me through three baths and countless other wipe-downs, sometimes screaming, sometimes running away, sometimes kicking water in my face like the dog I used to bathe before I had children. There was poop smeared on all the toilets and the floor and we used every single rag we own. Then we used towels. Meanwhile the baby was screaming because he wanted me, or he wanted more attention, or he wanted to put his hand in the toilet. Somehow we survived the night and got everyone into bed. In the quiet darkness Dan and I looked at each other like we'd just been through a war.

I hadn't known until this incident how much emotion Zion had been channeling through NOT POOPING. Not pooping is, I believe, the way he deals with all the tragedy of his current life situation. Not being the baby, not being the fastest, wanting to make his own decisions but needing to sublimate his will to that of his big brother. He loves his baby brother but he's jealous of him too. All that feeling he couldn't deal with he dealt with via not pooping. With the bonus of when he did make a mess Mama had to stop everything and clean it up.

So when the little dictator fell via coup d'exlax he started taking his emotions out on us in other ways. On Friday he pushed the baby down every time he passed him. He kicked each one of us when we tried to touch him, and tried to hit Elijah with the front door. When we got out of the car to go to lunch at the nursing home, instead of walking out to the median strip like normal, he ran ten feet away and hid behind a parked car. I climbed out of the car holding my purse and the baby and Zion was nowhere to be seen. I called, "Zion? Zion where's you?" with increasing levels of panic.

When I found him I was so glad he was alive I wanted to punch him in the face. Instead I yelled at him until I was sure he was crying for the right reasons.

He was too scared to poop in public after that, so we had a lovely lunch. But he shit his pants as soon as we got home. Literally, in the car, in the driveway.

We were having people over for dinner on Friday. I cleaned the bathrooms diligently. I took all the poopy laundry to the basement. Even so there was a lingering smell, and we served food out on the lawn.

While I was eating, Zion ran up to me and leapt onto my lap. Suddenly I felt poop running down my leg. At the same moment of our guests kneeled down to kiss his daughter and realized he had stuck his knee in a small pile of human excrement.

On Saturday Zion napped for four hours and when he woke up he was happier than I've seen him in weeks. Maybe he really did need a cleaning out, or maybe we should NEVER EVER GIVE HIM A LAXATIVE EVER AGAIN. I'm not sure how to interpret the situation.

In reality, I think the issue is bigger than digestion. Perhaps I cannot solve his pooping problem, because he does not just have a pooping problem. He has a LIFE problem. The problem is I straight up f-ed up his life by having a baby. He is mad and he doesn't know how to express himself. Given the opportunity, shitting on everything seems like a good start.