I'm A Poopy Failure

This "Poop Post" has been floating around in my head (ewww!) for a while. I debated posting it so soon after FADKOG's poop post. The difference is that hers was light-hearted and amusing. Mine is just pathetic.

My life is all about poop. My children's, my cats', and even now my neighbor's. I'm tired of poop.

My daughter is still not potty-trained. She will be three in less than a week. She can't even wear Pull-Ups, because they don't make them small enough. The smallest ones just fall right off of her, no matter how we adjust them. She's just incredibly tiny for her age. So she is still in diapers and I feel like a total failure as a mother. I didn't feel as bad when her brother wasn't potty-trained at three, because he was a boy and is autistic. Both boys and autistics tend to "get" toileting later than girls and NT (neurotypical) kids. But I feel like a failure with her, especially with my mother and mother-in-law both emphasizing how their daughters were potty-trained well before age TWO.

Spousehole has been neglecting his litter box duties (hee hee - she said "doody"), so I am having to be responsible for cat poo too. And we've got three of the little poop machines.

Boy has been experiencing severe toileting regression issues, i.e., he poops his pants. This is no ordinary poop either. You think you have smelled smelly poop? You haven't smelled anything yet. His smells like mothballs and the stench lingers horribly. If you don't thoroughly wash his poopy undies and pants before putting them in the washer, the whole load (she said load) reeks of mothball poop. I have washed some loads three times before the smell comes out. With all his poopy laundry taking precedence, I have fallen horribly behind (she said "behind") in non-poop laundry. He poops in his underpants and the result is that he is the only one with a reliable supply of clean underwear. Where is the logic in that?

Apparently, other parents of autistic children have reported this mothball-stinking-poop problem. It may be related to an overpopulation in the gut of clostridium. Apparently, the chemical that makes mothballs stink can be produced by clostridium acting on poorly digested casein, the protein in milk. We already have Boy on a casein-free diet, but we know he's been getting some here and there lately. Some researchers have found improvement in poop problems and behavior when autistic kids are put on vancomycin to cut down the clostridium population in the child's gut. Some parents report good success with probiotics. We are trying the probiotics thing right now. Getting them in him is no mean feat - he won't chew chewables and he just knows when we mix things with his food or beverages. He has a doctor appointment soon for his 7 year checkup and we're going to talk to his doc about trying vancomycin and possibly Nystatin. Normally I'm not big on taking antibiotics and antifungals randomly like that, but anything that might help Boy is worth a shot to me.

Boy's behavior has been abysmal lately. He refuses every request we make of him, even if it is something he WANTS to do. He is just being stubborn. Boy just outright refuses to do his work at school. He will be defiant all morning, but then when the teacher tells him he can't have his lunch until he finishes his work, he will do the entire morning's work in just a couple minutes. He's smart and he knows the lessons, he's just being defiant and stubborn. It's horribly frustrating for me and for his teachers. His teacher thinks his pooping his pants is just another act of defiance and she very well may be right.

I babysit my neighbor's 4-year-old a couple days a week. After dealing with my poopy kids all the time, it's kind of nice to have a kid around who can handle his own toileting. Until yesterday. He too pooped his pants (but at least he had the decency to cry about it). Spousehole was home and we flipped for who would get to clean up the latest poopy child in our house. I called heads and won the toss, Spousehole had to clean neighbor boy! I think neighbor boy was completely baffled by the coin toss. He had this "what the heck kind of parents are you people?" look on his face. It was priceless.

Bitching and moaning time is now officially over. Return to your usual amusements. Thank you.