From the archives of unimpressive parenting comes this record of my son’s compulsory 18-month health check. It’s primarily about sewage – for too long merely flushed away, and now here at last given the chance to gleam fecally in this contribution directed mainly at anyone who might be under the mistaken illusion that I am in any way a competent parent. 

Today, Rufus had his 18-month check-up at the Maternal and Child Health Centre. I’m convinced these “check-ups” exist mainly so the government can get their hands on statistical data about the race, though ostensibly they are to allay parental concerns regarding feeding, sleeping, social abilities, motor skill development, and over-large craniums (in our case). One’s child gets poked, prodded, measured, tested and standardised across a gamut of skill sets we’re otherwise told are completely arbitrary. Oh yes, “every child is different”; but they get a big ‘A’ for absent if they can’t exhibit, for example, ’scribbling with palmar grasp’.

So basically it’s a bit of a crock, but nonetheless induces a certain regrettable performance anxiety on the part of the parent. Suddenly on full display is that competitive instinct you were sure you would be able to suppress and, having failed to do so, resignedly (but excitedly) extrapolate out to the performance of four parts of a violin concerto at Grade 1 assembly, winning the 14th season of ‘My Kid’s A Star’, and graduating Year 12 dux.

For the hour you’re with the maternal and child health nurse, you want your little gem to outshine his peers and rise meteorically above the standard percentiles in ‘early pretend play’, ‘use of 5-10 words’, ‘fine pincer grip’, ‘descension of testes’ and ‘closure of fontanelle’. Bad.

My need for this validation was particularly acute today since it was our first visit to our local centre, having moved municipalities since our last check-up. I paid unusually close attention to our pre-appointment routine. Rufus’s nap had been lengthy and refreshing, his disposition was cheerful and engaging, he was loaded up on complex carbohydrate obtained from a natural source (banana), and I’d combed his hair deceptively at the back to cover that bit where I started giving him a haircut last week but stuffed it up and stopped after two curls, giving him the appearance of having an asymmetrical jaw. Hey, my home barbery almost saved us $8, so never mind that it will probably cost us an additional $20 at a real hairdresser now to fix the damage.

My fears were concurrently reduced and heightened when we arrived at the centre. It was immediately clear that the nurse in our new area, Rosa, is an intelligent, accomplished professional, unlike the fossilised old bat at our previous centre whose advice on everything centered around home ‘remedies’ all utilising a broth made from the water used to boil vegetables. Or making the baby wear more jumpers, or get more fresh air.

Fresh air, fresh air…oh that’s right, the poo. Circular narrative ahoy!

The motor skill part of the examination being nearly complete, Rufus was tasked finally with making a tower out of little wooden blocks. Should he be successful, he would be rewarded with some hundreds’n'thousands. This seemed an oddly dangerous choice of treat to me; I assume it served the double purpose of the child having to exhibit their dragee grip. But still, not an ideal snack for a toddler. Luckily, I always carry a flask of boiled-vegetable-water broth in my bag to dislodge any gullet obstruction Rufus may suffer. Mmm, barley water.

However, the blocks didn’t tempt him, and nor did the hundreds’n'thousands: he kept wanting to sit down and read the book from the previous task again. (It had in it a duck, some shoes, a ball AND a flower, so fair enough). I conjured up a question about immunisation and loudly asked it of Rosa while speedily constructing the tower myself as she consulted some medical propaganda booklet for the answer. The tower I’d sleightly made stood sturdily. As I waited quietly for praise to be showered down on Rufus, the air was suddenly cut by a piercing shriek and a foul malodorous stench – a sure sign Rufus was packing his dacks, at an unscheduled and irregular time of day for him.

After much unseemly grunting and straining, the job was done, and Rosa required me to change Rufus in a small anteroom prior to the examination continuing. As I did so, I congratulated myself on having a fresh nappy in my bag. Usually Rufus’s poo schedule is so predictable, I never carry a spare nappy with me for short visits such as to the Maternal and Child Health Centre. I happened to grab a spare one at the last minute on the way out today because there’s usually a part of the examination where the child must be naked, and if he’s done a little wee, he shouldn’t have to put the partly wet nappy back on, right? Oh, good parenting! But normally I wouldn’t bother to put one in my bag.

So i stripped Rufus off, arrogant in my supreme preparation, congratulated him on the firm ball of poo which was so neat it didn’t even require any wiping (luckily, because I hadn’t brought any baby wipes), wrapped the tidy (if outsized) turd in the nappy and put it discreetly in my handbag for later disposal. (Though the government want all your child’s stats, surprisingly they don’t want a poo sample, and you have to take all soiled nappies home).

We returned to Rosa’s office and the examination resumed. No sooner had Rufus been rewarded for ‘his’ tower of blocks than a vile odour, three times as offensive as the one pertaining to the previous rectal activity (though perhaps that was still lingering, compounding the rankness), rushed into my nostrils. Dude is never having hundreds’n'thousands again! Even Rosa blanched slightly (yet professionally, and with no mention of barley water or bracing weather). She requested I change him again.

Now it was my turn to almost void my bowels, for I alone was privy to the knowledge that I had only bought one nappy. Rosa, having been fooled by the artful deceit of my veneer of accomplished parenting, had naturally assumed I’d along bought many spare nappies, some eucalyptus-scented disposal bags, and an assortment of bum powers and creams. Instead of owning up, I again carried Rufus into the antechamber and stripped him off. Imagine my dismay to see his entire undercarriage smeared with that vile squishy almost diarrhoeal matter that invariably contains a corn kernel, two peas and a sultana, and seeps greenly in rings around the baby’s thigh fat rolls. I stood rooted in indecision, one hand holding Rufus’s legs together and up in the air away from his rancid arse-end, the other foraging vainly in my handbag for the baby wipes I knew weren’t there. Or a sock or a chocolate-bar wrapper or a leaf. The search yielded nought but keys and my eelskin purse, which cost too many dollars to be used as a toilet paper substitute.

I popped my head back into Rosa’s office, laughed casually as I plucked some tissues from a handy box on the shelf, and, out of eyesight again, sweated tensely as I spat on one of them and tried to staunch the filthy spread. I was saved – and yet crucified – by Rosa calling out to me not to bother dressing him as she wanted to weigh and measure him naked at that point anyhow. I wiped Rufus off as best I could, carried him against my hip with nary a thought for the unpleasant poo stain he left on my shirt, and put him down on the measuring table. He smelled terrible, but I thought I could get away with his soiled lower region since they’re meant to be measured with their legs together. But of course Rosa had to have a good feel of his testes and separated his legs bandily to do so. She momentarily peered sideways at me but didn’t say anything as she took in his stained legs, made her measurements and wrote her notes. I made a big show about picking him up and announcing loudly to him in babytalk that we were going back into the other room to finish changing him now that he was a big boy who had finished his examination.

To whit, three options presented themselves:
1. Let him go home nappiless (ba-bowwww, since he was on his last pair of clean pants already – yes, competent parenting AND laundering!).
2. Put him back in the diarrhoeal nap (ba-bowwww, shit was DISGUSTING).
3. Clean out the first poo nap as best I could under the time constraints and put it back on him.

So you know I scooped that large stinking turd out of the nappy with my bare hand, dropped it in my handbag, squashed the diarrhoea nap in on top of it, then the manky tissues, zipped the lot up, put the half-soiled nappy back on Rufus, made a detour past Rosa to collect our report, and exited the centre in a noxious and expeditious cloud. For those who have child welfare concerns, we live only 5 minutes from the centre so Rufus was fresh as a daisy again quicker than he could say “cat dog mama dada spoon bottle toot-toot”.

This protracted shit-related incident is easily the worst I’ve experienced so far. And that includes the time I neglected to re-nap him again quick enough and, while I was at the other end of the house fetching new pants, leaving him bare-bottomed in the laundry, he laid many eggs and proceeded to put them all in the washing machine. And the time I had a bath with him and he crapped on my lap. And the time he was having a wash in the trough and he stood up and backed one out in the hand I awkwardly put out for the purpose, not really knowing what else to do.

My son is surely in the 98th percentile for bad poo times. Or else I’m in the 98th percentile for SHIT PARENTING.