Twelve pounds of s&$t in a six pound diaper

For many of you without children, just the idea of handling another person's excrement is enough to make you gag. For those of you who have children or are expecting, and who were squeamish about the idea beforehand, nature created meconium as a sort of field test for new parents. Meconium is essentially nature's practical joke on new parents(http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meconium). It sticks to everything but the wipe, making it extra confusing when you haven't slept and have never changed a diaper before. It's also a treat that it is the first thing you see coming out of your child - not exactly calming.

Meconium - the joke's on you!

That said most people get through the diapering period with relative ease and are rid of the whole diaper changing issue after 2-3 years. Not so for most parents of children with special needs, and definitely not so for us.

Jump ahead six years (and for many special needs parents, this is an issue forever) and those relatively cute poopsie whoopsies become, as the saying goes, twelve pounds of shit in a six pound bag...literally.

Your sixty five pound child can no longer be laid on the ground to be wiped, so you're left to your own devices in terms of cleanup, which I imagine is the equivalent of asking a small bear to bend over (like the Charmin commercial, but not like that at all).

The "baby wipes", aptly named because of their intended use in wiping little baby butts, generally tear under the pressure of having to wipe a giant boy ass. This leaves your hands essentially unprotected, and if you've never noticed, the human hand fits perfectly in the human ass crack, and if you're curious, that rule applies to all ass cracks, not just yours. Truth be told, running your bare hand accidentally up a shitty ass crack is as horrible as it sounds, and becomes even more horrible each subsequent occurrence.

Does anyone have any idea how much adult diapers cost? We do, but only because we're price conscious and don't want to buy giant boy diapers if we can find petite diapers for seniors at a cheaper price.

Ever had a minor accident and had to throw your underwear away in the bathroom at work (be honest)? Think about what would have happened had you released the hounds into those undies. Go ahead. I'll give you a minute to think about the unholiness you would have had to deal with. That's what it's like to change a six year old diaper.

So you'll make a size seven Pampers, but not a size 13? Assholes.

This issue has been particularly stressful for us, especially as Mowgli transitions into full time schooling. As bad as it is for us, no teacher's aide, at minimum wage, should have to deal with such things. Sometimes we worry that he'll never fully train. Other times we laugh, because that's the only thing you can do when you find someone in their closet giving his cakoo the ol' Jackson Pollack treatment.

We've tried everything at this point, but this just seems to be one of those things that Mowgli is struggling with, and until he figures it out, we just have to do our best to not make it stressful for him, and not stress too much about it ourselves. That, and hope Pampers keeps expanding its offerings and that every hotel pool has a corresponding locker room where I can eliminate the evidence of a Mowgli water birth (thank you Sheraton Hotel - South Burlington!).

*Fun blog postscript- while writing this, Mowgli ruined another pair of underwear. True story.