My Birthday Blowout
Birthdays are supposed to be special. A day of celebration, of cake, of guilt-free indulgence. But as a father of three, with a wife and a dog, I should’ve known better than to expect a day off. What I didn’t expect, however, was a full-blown household-wide diarrhea apocalypse.
The day started before the sun was even up. Somewhere in that dark, groggy space between dreams and consciousness, I heard the words every parent dreads:
“Uh oh, da da.”
Now, when a toddler says, “Uh oh,” it’s usually bad. When they follow it with “da da,” it’s a direct summons to doom.
I stumbled into my two-year-old’s room, still half-asleep, and was immediately slapped awake by the smell. You know that special kind of stench that makes your eyes water and your stomach clench? The kind that feels like it physically punches you in the face? Yeah. That one.
As my eyes adjusted to the horror before me, I saw my son. Covered in poop. Hands? Poop. Crib? Poop. Sheets? Poop. Floor? Bonus poop. Poop had transcended the diaper.
This wasn’t just a leak. This was a biohazard situation.
I took a deep breath (huge mistake) and sprang into action.
Step 1: Containment.
I whisked him off to the bathroom, stripping off the poop-soaked pajamas like I was disarming a bomb. Straight into the bathtub he went, where I hosed him down like a crime scene clean-up crew.
Step 2: Decontamination.
His room was a war zone. I scraped, scrubbed, and sanitized, questioning every life decision that led me to this moment. Then, realizing I, too, now smelled like a sewage plant, I took my own emergency shower.
By now, the sun was up. Happy birthday to me.
The Great House-Wide Gastrointestinal Meltdown
Just as I finished my toddler’s cleanup operation, my other two kids emerged from their rooms—and they did not look good.
Within minutes, it was clear: The Plague had spread.
My teenage son made a mad dash to the bathroom but, in his urgency, fired before locking onto the target. The result? A diarrhea explosion down the front of the toilet. There are few things in life worse than the phrase, “Dad, I missed.”
We now had:
- A toddler leaking from both ends.
- A bathroom that required a hazmat suit.
- A house that smelled like a porta-potty at a music festival.
And let’s not forget the dog, who—thrilled at the new buffet of “interesting smells”—was trying to investigate every contaminated surface before I could stop her.
As the day progressed, the bathrooms were never unoccupied. There was always someone in there, suffering. At one point, I considered setting up a numbering system like a deli counter—”Now serving… unlucky family member #3.”
My toddler’s diaper pail, which usually lasts a week, was full within two hours. We were changing him so often that he started giving us side-eye like, Really? Again? His poor little butt was so chafed from the constant wiping that we had to switch to wet washcloths because he flinched every time a baby wipe came near him.
Meanwhile, my wife and I—still somehow symptom-free—were like overworked nurses in a field hospital. We staggered through the house, clutching rolls of paper towels, disinfectant wipes, and laundry baskets, whispering motivational phrases to each other like, We can do this. Stay strong. Don’t breathe through your nose.
The Final Act: The Poop Panty Disaster
Just as the day was winding down and we were about to collapse from exhaustion, my middle school daughter walked up to my wife with a very serious question:
“So… how do you know when to just wash panties or when to throw them out?”
My wife paused. Red flag.
Then our daughter pointed to her trash can.
Inside? At least a half dozen pairs of poop-streaked panties.
Apparently, instead of running to the bathroom when disaster struck, she just powered through it, then stealthily disposed of the evidence like a tiny, embarrassed fugitive. I have never seen my wife look so simultaneously horrified and impressed. How she kept a straight face, I don’t know.
Survival & Reflection
Finally, as we crawled into bed, utterly broken by fecal warfare, my wife looked at me and said, “Happy birthday, babe.”
And we just started laughing.
Because honestly, what else can you do?
Moral of the story: Parenthood is not glamorous. It is not clean. And sometimes, it really stinks. But at the end of the day, if you can survive a full-family diarrhea disaster on your birthday, you can survive anything.
Here’s to another year of fatherhood—hopefully with less poop.