It’s been a while since I’ve written anything about Bunny’s poop. I’ve taken a keen interest in it, ever since he was a baby and we had that Kombucha scare. But I sort of let the poop watch slide over the last few months. I got distracted. I had other shit to shoot. I forgot how important poop is in the parenting scheme of things.
The good news is, I’m back on poop watch alert now, and let me tell you, there’s mighty interesting happenings down there in bun-buns nappies.
Toddler poop is different from baby poop. I wrote about the scoop on baby poop a year ago. The basic rules still apply. Black, tarry poop is not good and probably means internal bleeding, so get to the docs right away. Mucous in poop could mean a virus or stomach bug. Bright specks or streaks of blood could be from an allergy or food intolerance, or an anal fissure.
Toddlers can either be constipated, evident through lots of grunting and straining to squeeze out a small hard dry pellet or two. Or they can have diarrhea, with lots of watery and possibly green runny poo running out several times a day.
Other than that, healthy toddler poop is supposed to be like adult poop. In other words, medium brown, shaped like a banana, the consistency of toothpaste, with little smell or gas. It should leave the body smoothly and effortlessly, with no strain, sliding slowly into the water. Now, seriously folks, how many poos do you have that are like that?
Anyway, that’s the toddler scoop in a nutshell. Unfortunately, Bunny’s poop is by no means normal. At 16 months he should be having mini brown bananas, but instead he is alternating between daytime hard, dry scratchy pellets and early morning explosive poops the size of Belgium that leak out through his nappies and pyjamas, and sometimes out onto the bed. It’s a devil to clear up. Bunny is an active monkey in the morning. He doesn’t stay still for love or money. Changing a nappy chock full of chunky, runny diarrhea when bun-buns is wriggling around like a demon to escape, is no fun at 5am.
Back to the poop itself. The pellets look like large rabbit poops. I know he’s the Bunny, but this is taking it too far. It’s not like he’s been out in the fields eating grass all day.
The explosive poop is even more disturbing. It’s sort of brownish, but fibrous and stringy, and on closer inspection you can see that it is actually composed of oodles of undigested food from the day before, and even the day before that. Whole pieces of fruit come through unscathed. Pieces of carrot and potato. Rice crackers. Millet. It’s all there. This morning I noticed what looked like lots of sunflower seeds. Which is very odd, as we haven’t had any of those at all. Unless he’s been outside under the bird feeder picking up seed scraps without my noticing.
Of course, this is all connected to Bunny’s food intolerances and allergies that I’m finally getting to grips with, after several months of denial. I guess I didn’t really have my shit together before now. I did write that post back in November about bunny’s bleeding bum. But that was 8 months ago, and you’d think I’d have been more on the cack case since then. Beats the shit out of me why I haven’t been paying attention to things like the red ring around Bunny’s poop chute. What kind of a crap mother am I, anyway?
As if it weren’t enough to be alcohol-free, drug-free, and partner-free, now I have to be gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free, egg-free, tomato-free, berry-free, apple-free, nut-free, corn-free and sugar-free.
Bunny has developed an unhealthy fascination with all things electronic. He’s completely obsessed with my iPhone, ever since I let him play with those toddler apps I downloaded for the flight to England and back. He now thinks the iPhone is his personal everyday toy, and he wants it in his paws at all times.
