Writer's Festival

At BallFiend's school, they have had a Writer's Festival all this week, with real live actual authors visiting the school, a book fair, a 'dress-up as your favourite book character' day (which BallFiend outright refused to participate in as he hates dressing up), and of course the children doing their own writing, illustrating (in water-colour and pencil) and then publishing their finished books...

A selection Prep Bicicletta's published works.

BallFiend is a very reluctant writer - whilst he can write at about the average Prep standard, he really doesn't like to. So it took a lot of effort to coax him to write his book. But he got there in the end.

 

Yep, I am still feeling gooey inside after reading the dedication and the piece on last page. 
--

The giant poo

This post will definitely be TMI for any reader who is not yet, or never intends to be, a parent. Move along - you have been warned.

Right, for those of you still brave enough to read on, this post is about the absolutely enormous poo that Thumper finally set free today. You may still opt out at this point. No hard feelings.

(Speaking of 'hard feelings', when Thumper feels a poo coming she calls out "I have a hard feeling." She came up with that description herself, and I reckon it's a pretty good one!)

Anyway, as you may recall from recent posts, Thumper recently entered the final phase of 'toilet-training': ie. she has replaced her nappies for undies. This does not necessarily mean that she never wees in her undies, but more often than not, she tends to successfully get the wee in the potty or toilet.

Poos, however, are a different matter. I am told it is extremely common for toddlers to take a lot longer to get the hang of putting poo in the toilet. So annoying as it is, we just smile, mutter 'nevermind' and clean it up.

Unfortunately somewhere over the past couple of weeks, Thumper got it into her head that when a poo comes out it is going to hurt. As a result she has become increasingly skilled at holding and resisting the urge to let it out. Of course, eventually (after a couple of hours) the poo-power wins, she looks around with a startled face, obviously completely taken by surprise. And I get another pair of undies to clean up.

However, Saturday came and went, with no sign of a poo from Thumper. DeepSpice and I didn't think much of it... she has gone for over 24 hours with no poos before. But then on Sunday, Thumper started to express some discomfort, every now and then, when the urge to poo struck. She would run to the toilet ("I have a hard feeling!") but a few minutes later would announce that "The poo is shy and it's gone back inside my bottom." So she went to bed on Sunday night, still holding on to her goods.

On Monday morning, Thumper was getting the urge to poo with more frequency, and crying out in pain each time. I asked her if she wanted to wear a nappy and poo in that, and she said yes. But even wearing a nappy, she couldn't allow herself let go. It was really horrible to watch, and I was starting to get quite concerned.

At school, after dropping BallFiend off, I had a chat to another mum who suggested putting Thumper in the bath to relax her. At this point I was willing to try anything... even if it did mean cleaning up a Code Brown (usually I would delegate that sort of thing to DeepSpice!)

So once back at home, I offered Thumper some prunes, then popped her into the bath and there she stayed for the next hour and a half. Every 5 minutes, Thumper would double over in pain as a bowel-cramp hit her. Moments later she'd be back to her cheery self, happily playing in the bath. Seriously, I felt like I was a midwife, assisting a mother in labour! I even convinced Thumper to kneel on her hands and knees when she felt the urge to push! Over and over again, she really looked like she was about to push that poo out, but then nothing... I have never seen such sheer (sub-conscious) determination to hold on!

But finally the wonders of a warm bath did the trick and I watched in fascinated horror as an enormous, brown poo emerged from her rear. I swear that poo was at least as long as her forearm. Strangely it looked a bit like Thumper had a puppy-dog's tail until the poo broke free and floated lazily to the surface.

You'd think with an hour and a half to plan what I was going to catch the poo in, I'd have thought to get a bucket ready. But no. So I grabbed the nearest receptacle - a hair-washing jug - fished out the poo and dropped it into the toilet. Then I had to empty the bath, clean it and Thumper off, then refill the bath because Thumper insisted she hadn't finished playing yet (despite the fact that her fingers and toes were as wrinkly as the prunes she had consumed earlier). Finally, Thumper allowed me to extract her from the bath so she could be dried, dressed and fed some lunch... after that ordeal, we were both hungry!


Postscript - Saturday 8 December:

I woke up this morning to hear the thump-thump-thump of Thumper's little feet down the hallway. (Whoever came up with the term "the pitter-patter of little feet" to describe children had no idea, or they didn't live in a house with timber floorboards!) She stopped at our bedroom door and called out "I need to go to the toilet." And I replied "off you go then". A few minutes later, a triumphant Thumper calls out "I did a poo! I did a poo on the toilet!"

Thinking it would probably just be a single tiny pellet (she's managed that once or twice before), I stumbled out of bed and into the bathroom where I found a proud Thumper peering into the toilet bowl. She stepped back so I could look and sure enough, she had done a proper poo in the toilet.

So maybe all that holding on did serve some purpose. Maybe she had to go to extremes to find the balance between incontinence and constipation.

I just really hope she has actually got the hang of it now, because once she does we are having a post-potty party!!
--