Exploding Children

WARNING – if you don’t like tales of vomit and poo and babies, stop reading now.

I remember, with fondness, the first time my eldest son exploded.

It was approximately 3am in the summer of 1993. My wife had just returned from the hospital with our first son and I was lying there in bed on that first night, struggling to sleep. I am a light sleeper and the sound of a third person breathing softly in our room was a little too much noise for my level of tolerance. The light breathing of my little one started to become more agitated and louder. After a minute or two, he was crying softly.

“I’ve just fed him,” said my wife. “I think his nappy needs to be changed.”

Leaping out of bed like a hero, I said. “I will do it.”

I don’t know who I thought I was – some kind of super Dad perhaps. Dressed just in underpants (a sight that was pretty dreadful even then), I crept around the bed, picked up my new son and stumbled to the bathroom. By this time, he was crying really loudly (possibly at the sight of me in underpants). I was stunned that a creature so small could make so much noise. The more I tried to soothe him the more he screamed. His face started to turn red.

I clumsily extracted him from his babygrow and lay him onto the special plastic contraption we had bought to, apparently, make changing a nappy easy. It was perched on the bath. I knelt in front of it.

For a few seconds I actually thought I knew what I was doing. My son was facing me, his little legs kicking in front of me. I pulled the tabs on the disposable nappy and opened it up to reveal a vision of hell.

The nappy was full of a green-black substance that frankly looked alien to me. And it was sticky – boy was it sticky. For a second I thought it was alive. And the odour, though not utterly revolting was deep and menacing.

Breathing in, I went for it. I carefully wiped away as much of the foul substance as I could from his bottom and disposed of the contaminated baby wipes slowly and carefully into yet another plastic contraption we had bought. I was careful to avoid getting the green substance onto any part of my skin. I placed the final baby wipe into the contraption and turned back to my son. That’s when he exploded.

First, a huge fountain of urine spurted out of his little todger, hitting me directly on my throat. I reacted the same way that any other person would do having been hit by fresh urine for the first time; I screeched and fell backwards, clawing at my throat as the foul warm liquid ran down my bare chest.

As I fell, I was aware that the fountain was not stopping. The floor, the plastic contraption, my son and I were all covered in urine. It was relentless. How could a small baby contain so much pee? I had it in my hair – MY HAIR!!

When it finally stopped, I had to set about cleaning up the mess. I carefully cleaned the baby first, then the plastic contraption. I lay down a towel and carefully placed my now happy baby onto it. He watched with interest as I mopped up. And then he exploded again – this time from the other end.

I watched in horror as another lump of green stickiness spurted out onto the towel. In panic, I picked up my son foolishly thinking that would somehow stop the mess. It didn’t. He hadn’t finished. Not by a long way. And there was more pee as well.

By the time he had finished, I was covered in urine and green poo – and so was he. And the worst part of it was that the green crap had somehow found its way to my fingernails. MY FINGERNAILS!!!

My wife, wondering what the screeching was, came and rescued me at this point. She was surprised to find that I was the one screeching, not my son. “What are you feeding him?” I wailed. “Poo shouldn’t be THIS colour!”

Since then I have had a major aversion to the substances that explode out of children. Sadly I have had to cope with such trauma on numerous occasions.

Around a year later, I was playing with my eldest son, this time unaware that my wife had just fed him. He loved being lifted into the air; he would whoop with delight as I raised him above my head and lower him back down.

I was sitting on the floor in the lounge lifting him up, lowering him down and lifting him up ad nauseam. He was giggling and I loved it. Unfortunately, I overdid it and he exploded.

A fountain of vomit spurted out of his mouth with such force that I almost fell backwards. It splashed out onto my T-shirt and ran down the inside onto my bare chest. It was warm, sticky and horrifically smelly. My wife came in to see what the screeching was (me again) and screamed at me: “Don’t let any of it go on the carpet”.

There I was holding a puking child, screeching like a banshee (both of us) and squeezing my legs together so that the unending fountain of vomit didn’t splash onto the carpet.

My final tale also involves vomit. Again, it was my eldest son. This time, we were in the park kicking a ball around. He was two and I was trying to train him to be the next George Best. After a while, he started whimpering.

“Are you OK?” I asked. He started crying. Like any caring father, I picked him up held him close to comfort him. And then he exploded. He threw up all over me. Once more, the foul substance found its way under my clothes and onto my naked skin. I screeched in disgust and this time there were plenty of people around to laugh at me. And they did – with gusto.

I ran to the car like a man possessed, kicking the ball as I went, carrying my screaming child and almost puking myself. People stared at me as if I were an alien. By the time I got back to the car, I had it in my hair, all over my coat and even running down my trousers. The car was a complete smelly mess. When I returned home, I had to clean up myself, my son and my car.

There have been many other tales of child explosion in my life and they have all been revolting. Thankfully, those episodes are now over as my children are both teenagers.

I’m looking forward to relating tales of their explosions when they have become mature adults.

I think I’ll wait until the day the get married.