Much ado about poo

When I was a little girl I remember running to the huge gum tree in our backyard and hiding behind it with my eyes squeezed shut and my fingers jammed in my ears because my mother had taken some asthma medication that had made her dry retch.

I also remember not eating Caramello Koalas, roast chicken, scones and a myriad of other foods for years because (on one occasion) I vomited after eating them and somehow associated them with being spew-worthy.

And then there was the park I wouldn’t look at every time we drove past because (on one occasion) I ate some stale baked beans whilst playing there and proceeded to spend the night throwing up. Banned the park. Banned baked beans. You get the picture. Nutcase! 

So the fact I can now hold The Ranga’s heaving head over a bucket every fifteen minutes for an entire night and scrape chunks of vomit from the fibres of bed linen makes me mighty proud!

From the moment I witnessed my first meconium-filled nappy to the moment I wore my first projectile vomit – I realised I was going to become intimately involved with Another Person’s Bodily Fluids – For. A. Very. Long. Time.

Miss C is fairly low maintenance these days. She can use the toilet, rarely vomits and can wipe her own nose. The Ranga, on the other hand, is like a fire hydrant squirting from all orifices. If he coughs too hard, he spews. If he throws an almighty tantrum, he spews. If he eats too much, he spews. He has only just learnt to wee sans nappy (at 3.5 years) and was found recently in the kids’ toilet at a resort, naked from the waist down, and ‘ice-skating’ in a concoction of soap and his own urine!

But it’s poo he has the most problems with. When he isn’t withholding for three days, he is unloading giant brown packages in undies, in nappies, in the bath, on the floor, and occasionally, in the toilet! He has ‘issues’ with the whole bowel movement arrangement and I get where he’s coming from. Poo does not have many endearing qualities. It’s brown, it smells, and in our house, it incites more hysteria than Beatlemania (for him, not us).

If I were poo’s publicist, I would slam the door in its face!

However, because I empathise with my phobic son – having rejected spew-inducing parks and baked beans and chicken, myself - I am determined to put the positive in poo…and any assistance anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated.

The only two poo role models I have come up with thus far have been:

1.   “Mr Hankey, the Christmas Poo” from South Park. But I don’t really want The Ranga a) watching South Park at the age of three or b) fishing his faeces out of the toilet or his nappy or whatever, to engage it in conversation.

2.   A woman I saw on a documentary recently who was making sculptures out of cow manure – with bare hands – because she liked the texture!! WHAT!?!

So I Googled ‘poo’ to see what came up (as Google contains all of life’s answers) and found an array of links to poo and wee songs, poo arcade games, poo humour, stories about whale poo and climate change, Bristol stool analysis charts (with pictures!!!), more people creating art using faeces (what’s with that??) and bizarre YouTube videos that I was too afraid to click on.

And I still have nothing!!

We have always been fans of the no pressure approach to toileting, and The Ranga has willingly participated in the pooing in the toilet process three times, but he now equates defecating with losing a vital internal organ and no amount of cajoling will convince him otherwise.

The only solution I can come up with (besides bribery, nappies for life etc.) is to keep allowing The Ranga to watch people using the toilet until he learns that it is a perfectly natural and convenient human function.

Like I did on Saturday - when I was using the parents’ room toilet in a shopping centre - and he hit the button for the automatic door whilst I was mid-wee. Not sure how many people copped an eyeful, as I was too busy cutting off the stream (surprisingly good pelvic floor muscles), leaping across the room, cowering in a corner and screeching with my pants around my ankles.

The moral to this sordid tale: I may have overcome my childhood vomit phobia, but have now developed an irrational fear of my naked arse being exposed in public.

And…The Ranga has not pooed for three days!