An everyday epiphany

I remember babysitting as a teenager and dreading dirty diapers. Bleh. It was the worst part of it for me. The smell of a poopy diaper was enough to make me leave the child on the floor and run gagging to a toilet on more than one occasion. Bleh. I remember tying bandannas around my face as a mask to help keep out the smell. I also remember moms, including mine, telling me that "it's just different when it's your own kid" Any compliant about something I found repugnant or overwhelmingly difficult about childcare was met with the reply, "It'll be different when it's your own child." How is it supposed to be different? What, does the poop smell better then? I was definitely skeptical but because everyone said it, I figured it must have some legitimacy.

I started nannying for a family in September. They have one little girl. It didn't take long for the two of us to become really good friends. I don't know how what we have can really constitute a friendship since she was only 17 months at the time and her vocabulary consisted of about 10 words, but it's a friendship nonetheless. I look forward to seeing her every morning. I miss her over the weekends. She runs to give me hugs when I see her. We play with blocks and learn about colors and really learn about life in general. It's totally amazing to watch a child learn something for the first time. Her enthusiasm and joy over her little discoveries is incredible to be around. For instance, a couple weeks ago she was crawling on the kitchen floor and came up to a bar stool that was in her way. She started to go around it and then stopped. She looked at it and discovered she would fit under it. So she crawled between the legs of the bar stool and out the other side and collapsed into giggles over this new accomplishment. Then, of course, being the little scientist that every toddler is, she had to test it from the other side. Would it work if she crawled through the opposite way? Yes! More giggles. Since then every possible item of furniture with enough clearance has been crawled through.

It's been interesting to see what intense feelings have sprung up in me for this little girl in just the past 4 months. I love her deeply and would fight until I couldn't fight anymore to keep her safe. I'm beginning to understand the whole "don't mess with a Mama Bear's cubs" thing. What I've been told about things being "different" when the child is your own is starting to make sense. And I'm not even her mother. I can't imagine how much more intense these feelings are when it's actually your child. Thinking about this over the past week I started to realize that perhaps it really is a different story when the kids are your own. Maybe the poop does smell different. Little did I know I'd have the chance to really test the poop theory this week.

"My" little girl started potty training this week. We've been kind of doing it a little haphazardly up to this point, but now it's for real and it's time to be consistent. I'm glad I forgot to consider potty training when I was weighing the pros & cons of taking this job. Now there's no turning back. My emotions are all wrapped up to the point that it'd break my heart to leave and as much as I might want to, potty training can't be put off. It is inevitable and must go forward. In the long run, it'll be better right? This is the end of diapers, after all. Too bad the diapers can't leave without great drama and much messiness. Cue the bandanna.

Yesterday during lunch she got that look, the one where you know something is going on down there. We went into the bathroom and she sat on her little potty for about half a second. Her new awareness of what was going on inside her made her so nervous that she couldn't sit still. She started pacing in a circle. She kept repeating my name with this panicked expression in her voice. Sawah, sawah, sawah. SAWAH! The poor thing. I knew there was no way she would be able to be comfortable enough to sit on the potty at this point and yet, putting the diaper back on would, in effect, be taking a step backwards. But rather than be grossed out by the alternative, all I could think about was how to help her not feel scared. So I held her on my lap, diaperless bottom and all, until she was calmer. She eventually went while clinging to my shoulders. Thankfully, they have a tile floor in the bathroom. I was able to maneuver myself so that I was still holding her but was no longer in the line of fire. The funny thing is, it wouldn't have mattered if I was. What mattered was making sure she was ok. As I sat there on the bathroom floor looking at the mess I was going to have to clean up I understood. It is different when it's your child. It's not that your senses become altered or a magic wand has been waved to make things less repugnant. It's that you have a genuine love that runs so deep that it makes someone else's needs completely overshadow your own.

Don't get me wrong, the poop still smells. There's no way around that, but I don't mind anymore. It's because my whole reason for being there has changed. It's not the $8/hour paycheck that motivates me like it was in high school. It's because there's a little girl that I love that needs someone to hold her hand when learning about life gets a little scary. So, because I love her, we'll bravely trudge through potty training together.