Vomit: Greatest Hits

Children ought to arrive with a manual that dedicates at least three lengthy chapters to vomit.

If the site of vomit, the smell of vomit, or even the mere mention of the word "vomit" makes your stomach queasy, then I've got some bad news for expectant parents. For the first couple of months, babies are little more than adorably cute containers of drool, poop and vomit. Squeeze them too tightly or bounce them on your knee a minute too long and you'll see how quickly all that drool, poop and vomit can magically overflow, sometimes simultaneously.

And if your wife is anything like mine, you won't even have to wait for the baby to arrive before you become proficient at handling vomit. At first, I carried her morning sickness bucket like it was filled with radioactive waste. I walked it to a remote section of the neighboring wooded lot and dumped it, then stood a good distance away and sprayed it with the hose. By the time Our Daughter arrived, all the bucket got was a quick swish of water from the spigot and a spritz of Lysol. If any got on my shoes, pants, or in my hair, I no longer cared. Vomit and I had made our peace with each other. Ours was a live-and-let-live relationship.

But that tiny bit of morning sickness vomit is nothing compared to the mass quantities produced by a late-night-breast-milk-binging baby with the upset stomach and an inability to walk to the bathroom toilet. Ever try cleaning vomit from the intricate spindles of a baby crib? Don't worry, you will.

Or how about toddler vomit? When Our Daughter was two years old, she spent much of one visit with relatives circling a coffee table slowly devouring almost an entire bowl of gold fish crackers. A couple hours later, she stood in the crib provided to us and projectile vomited a direct hit at her mother's chest from a distance of five feet. Let me assure you, you know it's a quality vomit when one parent spends two hours cleaning undigested gold fish crackers out of a shag rug and the other has to bathe the baby, take a shower and run a load of laundry.

Or how about the first time they get sick on their bedroom floor? My mother used to tell us to throw up on our beds if we were going to get sick. "I can put your sheets in the wash," she'd say. "I can't put the carpet in the wash."

But there's something counter-intuitive to vomiting on your bed and, in effect, all over yourself. Your body understands vomit is a thing to be shared, so it makes every attempt to spread it out as far and wide as possible.

For instance, were we to go back and visit the house we lived in when our children were born, I would not be surprised to find a barely discernible pink stain on the floor of the back bedroom where, one evening, Our Daughter released a torrent of Raviolio-tinged vomit. It was a monumental achievement, really, and proved too tough a match for any chemicals and carpet cleaning machines money could rent. We were somehow spared the joy of finding out what happens when a boy sleeping on the top bunk throws up in the middle of the night, but that doesn't mean our sons haven't had their share of incidents.

The German once decimated our van with a wave of nausea, again possibly inspired by gold fish crackers. I missed that one and have always felt a bit left out. By all accounts, it was mighty impressive and required some extreme detailing of the leather seats.

And the Italian, well it's been only a few days since his last performance. You would think by age twelve he would have figured out where vomit belongs. Only minutes after he agreed it would be a good idea for us to get him a bucket, but before we were able to get it to him, he sat up on his bed, hurriedly proclaimed "I think I'm going to need that bucket," and immediately proceeded to puke all over the floor. Also hit in the onslaught were his bed, his brother's bed, a bookshelf, three Lego sets, and the storage bins under both their beds. Best of all, I had just given him bubble gum flavored Ibuprofen and the only food he'd eaten in the previous hours were Twizzlers.

Some day I'm going to find out who the genius is who decided it would be a good idea to pack the medicine parents administer to sick children with enough red dye to stain clear through to the floorboards and give him a good, swift kick in the pants.



© 2013 Mark Feggeler

Buckle Head

There we were, winding our way along circuitous routes through the maternity ward at the hospital, trying our darndest to walk a baby out of My Lovely Wife.

They say walking is good for a thing like that. I think they're liars.

I think the only reason they tell moaning mothers-to-be to get up and walk around is because they're tired of listening to them. They shoo her out the door and head her down the hallway to be somebody else's problem for the next ten minutes. If they're lucky, maybe she'll toss the baby halfway to Ortho. Knees and hips, feh! Let's see if those joint doctors know what to do with a placenta or two.

Anyway, Our Daughter was stubbornly clinging to the womb interior, refusing to answer the call of life's great eviction notice. Contractions were ratcheting down with ever-increasing rapidity and, by the look on My Lovely Wife's face, were no picnic.

The most amazing thing to me was how sincerely apologetic she would get after every contraction. I'm sitting there on a cushioned chair sipping a diet soda and making small talk while she reenacts the John Hurt scene from Alien, but when the pain passes she apologizes to me. Where is that kind of emotional misdirection when I forget to go the bank?

Oh, there's another contraction, and this one looks like a doozy! Eyes are squeezed tight, her fingers are gripping mine, and everything we learned about the therapeutic value of regulated breathing flies straight out the window. She sits in a chair and pushes her head into me until the severe cramping subsides. When she looks up to tell me how sorry she is for being in pain, all I can see is the imprint of my belt buckle across her forehead.

You know those times you aren't supposed to laugh? That was one of those times.

And it was one of the very few of those times in which I actually had enough sense to stifle it. It got slightly more difficult to hold in the laughter the second and third times she sat back with the deep red grooves in her forehead displaying a detailed relief of my buckle, but I managed. Not longer after, following the administration of some very effective pain medications that left her smiling contentedly through contractions that could squeeze coal into diamonds, My Lovely Wife gave birth to Our seven-pound eleven-ounce Daughter.

Three-and-a-half years later, when it was time for twelve pounds of twins to join our family, we had a pretty good idea what we were in for at the hospital that morning. And I made sure to leave the belt at home.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

Happy Mother's Day!

Almost 14 years ago, when my poor Lovely Wife's belly appeared unable to expand any farther, she gave birth to our first child.

She desperately hoped for a daughter and the ultrasounds told us she would get what she wanted. I got quite good at recognizing the tell-tale embryonic gender indicators during those visits. It helped that our unborn baby girl did not mind gracing us with the ocasional explicit angle -- a habit that doesn't seem to end until they reach 10 or 11 years of age.

Ever the impatient woman, my Lovely Wife employed certain tactics to encourage the birthing process. She had read the act of walking would help move the baby along down the birth canal, so it was not an uncommon sight during those final weeks of her pregnancy to see her circling our small living room with a very confused Dalmation sniffing at her heels as she went round and round the coffee table. She even walked the running track at our local high school during the American Cancer Society's Relay For Life the day before checking in to the hospital. That's what I call determination.

Once we had her settled in the birthing suite, labor pains escalated as the laughably mild contractions of the day before were replaced by the real thing. The pains came and went all through that Saturday night.

And what was the expert advice we received to help move the process along? Walk.

So, I played the part of Dalmatian as we walked circles around the corridors, repeatedly stopping as the next wave of contractions gripped my Lovely Wife. If a chair were handy, she would sit and press her head into my stomach as she concentrated on controling her breathing. I learned then that it's extremely difficult to maintain the appropriate serious composure when your wife looks up at you with a belt buckle impression in the middle of her forehead.

Eventually, the epidural was administered. We are not the all natural, new age, unconventional, statement-making kind of people. Drugs exist for specific purposes, and this was one of them. I kept watching the monitor showing the onsloaught of massive contractions and eying the mother-to-be to make sure the medications were doing their job, but I had nothing to fear.

"Everyone should have an epidural," she sighed, oblivious to the internal struggles.

Our Darling Daughter presented herself after only three rounds of pushing and deep breathing. I cut the cord, she cried, we cried, they cleaned her up, and we took turns holding her. Family members came and went, oohing and aahing over the scrunched up, swaddled bundle that was our new baby girl.

A day later she was home with us, and our lives were forever changed. Now, if someone can help us get through the teenage dating years, we might survive to grandparenthood.

Happy Mother's Day to all you Mothers out there. Thank you for the blessings you've brought to our lives.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

God Got It Wrong

Some things are beyond our control.

The clothing styles of the 1970s are a perfect example. One day, bellbottoms don't exist. The next day, we're all wearing flared jeans. One day, shirt collars are starched and understated. The next day, I'm wearing floppy butterfly collars so wide a strong breeze could carry me out over Long Island Sound.

Family planning is like that, too. When we had one child, the world seemed perfect. We were able to give her all our attention and make certain she had everything she needed to be happy and healthy. Our plan was to wait four or five years to give her a sibling, preferably a sister if my Lovely Wife had any say in the matter.

As it turns out, she didn't.

For starters, waiting four or five years would have taken greater planning skills and restraint than we apparently possess. It also doesn't help that we, as a couple, are uber-fertile. I'm pretty sure just being in the same room and thinking about having sex back then would have resulted in either one of us getting pregnant.

Only two years into our first child, we found out another baby was on the way. When we told our Daughter she would be a big sister, she innocently referred to the impending bundle as "babies."

"No, sweetie," my Lovely Wife would tell her, "only one baby."

"No, Mommy, two ones," our Daughter would respond. You can imagine our newfound respect for -- and fear of -- our Daughter when the first ultrasound revealed we were, indeed, expecting twins.

Already perturbed by the fact of the pregnancy not fitting into the timeframe of her plan, my Lovely Wife began crying once the doctor said "Now let's take a look at the other one" and she didn't stop for several days. She gradually came to terms with the idea of multiples and consoled herself by wishing for two more daughters, or at least one girl and one boy.

For my money, I didn't care what they were. Even during our first pregnancy I didn't have a preference. When my Lovely Wife asked whether I wanted a boy or a girl I would smile and say I just wanted a healthy baby. She found this an unreasonable and irritating stance to take.

"Everybody wants a healthy baby," she would say. "Do you want a boy or a girl?!"

When the time came to find out what the twins would be, you can imagine the quantity of tears that flowed when the ultrasound clearly displayed evidence of the Y chromosone at work. The oft-repeated lament over the next few months from my Lovely Wife was: "I can't believe I'm having two freaking boys!"

Even our Daughter, with her fledgling supernatural powers, was disappointed. We explained to her that God must have wanted her to be the big sister of two baby brothers.

"Well, God got it wrong," she said.

Of course, all reservations melted away once the boys made their big debut. Their mother and big sister fell in love with the little ham hocks, as did I, and life hasn't been the same since.

After the boys were born, people asked if we planned to have any more. Yeah, right. Once they start coming out in pairs, you've got to put some serious thought to the potential ramifications of your actions. Let's just say, one of the first calls we made after getting them home from the hospital was to the urologist.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler