LBM

"Waaaake up. Waaaake up." A small voice in my head spoke in the middle of the night. I guess I should wake up to check on the baby. During the last week or so, she had been reverting back to waking up around 3:30 a.m. for a feeding and diaper change. She fell asleep tonight very early, somewhere around 8:00 so I anticipated a slight change in the feeding schedule. I opened my eyes to find two big, brown eyes looking back at me. She apparently had been awake for a little while.

"What are you doing up, little girl?" I whispered and glanced over at the clock. It was 3:15 a.m. I groaned as the little voice in my head faded. Tracie was also starting to wake from hearing my voice. I sat up to prepare to warm up another feeding bottle.

She was lying there perfectly still just watching me. "Stop staring at me! You're creeping me out!" I whispered to Sydney jokingly as I undo the velcro of the Swaddle-Me cloth to free up Sydney. Before crawling out of bed and heading to the small cooler in the bathroom where we keep the bottles each night, I decided that I should take her to the changing table because I thought I smelled dirty diaper. I slid my hands under Sydney to pick her up. Tracie stirred and reached over to gently pat Sydney on the legs, as she usually does to greet the baby.

"Honey, something feels wet down here. She must have pee'd a lot and soaked her diaper through," Tracie said. "Good idea to check her first. I'll go to warm the bottle."

Something smelled, though. The scent got a little stronger when I picked up the baby.

"Code 10!! Code 10!!"

Without a word more, we both knew as the silent alarms in our heads went off like a tornado warning siren. I sprinted out of bed in the darkness, baby in hand, and deposited Sydney on the changing pad on the table. Under the dim light of the nightlight, I couldn't see anything but I definitely felt the same wetness on the hand that was supporting the baby's bottom. In the background, I heard Tracie sprint into action. In her grogginess, Tracie never forgot that the baby needed to be fed. She was going for the bottle warmer and the cooler in the bathroom. I had to chuckle.

I flipped on the light. I surveyed the damage. It was bad. It was not entirely unexpected as the staff at the daycare center had warned us that Sydney had loose stool earlier that day. They had noted it in their daily report for us to take home. We were not too concerned since the baby was not running a fever and was not fussy. Tracie and I huddled.

"LBM?" she asked.

"LBM," I said.

"How bad?" she asked.

"Bad," I said. "I think the levee has been breached."

I showed her. Sydney had liquidy bowel movement, LBM, as they called it at the daycare center. She had soaked through the diaper and soiled the back of her onesie. I unbuttoned the onesie at her crotch to further inspect the damage. The entire inner lining of the diaper was coated with a layer of yellowish, liquidy poop. We huddled again.

"Time to soak her?" I asked.

"Yup!" Tracie said and went off to fill the baby's tub. I rolled the back flap of the onesie in a few sheets of papertowel on the changing pad like an eggroll that no one would want to eat. It was a good thing we had made it a habit to always lay the baby on some papertowels instead of directly on the pad of the changing table. We had learned our lesson from Sydney pee'ing between diaper changes and had to constantly wash the pad off.

Flashback: One week ago today (Friday, June 23) - The daycare center told me that Sydney seemed constipated. She had only one bowel movement all day and seemed to struggle to pass the stool. I thought it would be TMI (too much information) to ask if they had felt the consistency of the stool so I didn't ask. It would have been nice if I had known whether it felt like peanut butter to the touch, as it should be. Anything harder would have worried me. But I let it go, thanked them and took the baby home. When Tracie came home, I reported to her that the baby might be constipated. We took the baby upstairs to change her into a new outfit, as we usually do after she had spent the day at the daycare center.

She seemed fussier than normal lately. She seemed to cry very quickly after soiling her diapers. We guessed it was normal as some babies tend to be more sensitive to dirty diapers than others. But just to be sure, we decided to inspect. I had consulted the baby care book and knew what I was looking for. We lifted the baby's legs and examined the situation. She had a couple of areas around the anus that looked red and swollen. They looked like miniature hemorrhoids. Sydney had a couple of "anal fissures", as the official medical term listed in the book.

"Can I put some Preparation H on it?" I asked.

"Hush your mouth," Tracie said. "We can't put Preparation H on a baby."

"We have to do something," I mused.

Tracie had consulted with one of our pediatricians awhile back when we first thought Sydney had constipation. He spoke with an accent, which reminded me of the father character in the movie My Big, Fat Greek Wedding. In the movie, the father of the bride had this thing for Windex. He thought that Windex could fix any ailment. If someone had a cut or scrape, he would try to spray Windex on it. It seems to be similar with this pediatrician, except it is Aquaphor. Since the first day we met him, he suggested Aquaphor for everything skin-related. So there it was, he suggested applying a bit of Aquafor to my baby's fissures to ease the pain. Tracie whipped out the ointment jar and Aquaphor'ed Sydney.

Fast Forward Ahead: Tuesday, June 27 - Sydney was still constipated a little but at least the anal fissures were almost gone. SOMEONE had a bright idea. "Let's give her prune juice," she said. The doctor had suggested giving Sydney a little prune juice if she was not having normal bowel movement. A colleague had mentioned giving her baby a little prune juice also. I agreed to the plan. Somewhere along the line, we had forgotten how much to give the baby. I vaguely remembered someone mentioning a tablespoon to start. If nothing happened, then up the dosage to 2 tablespoons and wait. Tracie bought a big jug of prune juice and proceeded with her plan. She stirred some juice into 6 ounces of formula. She showed me the bottle. The liquid was brown. I asked her how much and whether she was sure it was the right amount. She said 1 ounce and she was sure. During the feeding, I kept nagging that I thought it was too much. The baby started cutting the cheese after taking about 2 ounces from the bottle. There was a steady series of farts coming from within the diaper. She got scared and pulled the bottle out at 4 ounces.

"It can't possibly work THAT fast," she said. Nonetheless, she opted for making another 2 ounces of normal formula to finish the feeding. We waited and watched for 2 days. Nothing really happened. The baby seemed to have gone back to having normal poop. Crisis over, we thought. The prune juice didn't really do anything, we guessed.

Fast forward: Present time (Friday, June 30, 3:30 a.m. 'ish) - We were contemplating how to pull the baby's onesie off without smearing the poop all over her back and head. The back flap of the onesie was rolled in layers of papertowel but still, the liquid was oozing. We were just not sure how far up her back did the stuff travel. We were too panicky to think straight. We huddled, again.

"What do you think?" I asked. "We seem to have a new issue."

"Cut it?" she suggested.

"Cut it!" I replied.

We recalled a story I had told Tracie after my last business trip. Trying to kill a bit of extra time before getting on the plane, I had spent time at a bookstore browsing the Parenting section. I had read a funny story in "Baby Laughs : The Naked Truth About the First Year of Mommyhood" by Jenny McCarthy about her dealing with the baby's diarrhea. In the middle of the night, her husband told her that the baby had produced a one-foot turd. She checked it out and told him that the one-foot turd WAS the baby. Apparently, the boy had mamaged to smear poop all over himself. They tried to remove the clothing and made it worse by pushing poop into his nostrils when they pulled the onesie off. They learned their lesson and cut it off the next time.

"Prepare the OR (Operating Room)!!" I shouted as I rushed to find a pair of scissors.

By the time I returned, Tracie had bunched the front of the baby's onesie into a tight wad between her hands. She was ready for the operation. There was no time to don the proper clothing. The mask, gloves, aprons and clothes pins (for our noses) had to wait. The stench was starting to make me gag, but I held my breath and went to work. A couple of quick snips, and it was over. We pulled the baby out, and Tracie rushed her off to the bathroom to get her cleaned off. I was left to clean up the aftermath. It was a successful operation. Baby was smiling and cooing. She probably thought it was hilarious. I was left standing there to wipe everything down, bundle up the mess and shove it into the disposable diaper bag.

Tracie returned with a clean, happy baby to a clean, fresh-smelling changing table. As she was dressing Sydney, I fumbled around with a wet cloth to pick the remains from under my fingernails. By this time, I was wide awake. There's no point going back to sleep since we had to get up in another 90 minutes anyway, and we still hadn't fed her yet. Tracie fed the baby; I washed the smudged Swaddle Me cloth in cold water and hung it up to dry for now. I burped her and rocked her to sleep. I put her back to bed and went to work on my blog. It seemed an appropriate thing to do to catalog the details while they were fresh.

Before going our separate ways to go to work this morning, we huddled...again. What were the lessons learned?
1) The prune juice probably worked too well and the result was delayed for whatever reason. No more prune juice for awhile. We should also cut back on the dose.
2) It was a good thing we had the foresight to line the mattress with water-proof liner. If the problem had been worse, we might have had to steam clean or even replace the mattress.
3) We needed to stock up on some cheap onesies or other clothes that did not require pulling them off over her face in case the baby ever had the runnies again. Cutting through expensive baby clothes was not a good long term solution.
4) Perhaps it was time to consult the professionals again. Tracie decided to have the baby checked out by the pediatrician if she had diarrhea at the daycare center. I sure hope he doesn't recommend Aquaphor as a remedy.