As a mom, I’ve found myself in many a troubling situation. Ranking right up there in my top 5 is a recent experience that involved someone else’s urine staining my clothes. If you are a mom of children under the age of 5, this probably doesn’t make you blink twice. You know the drill as a mom, you go to work with spit-up on your shoulder, go to the gym with pee on your knees, and go grocery shopping with snot in more places than you can see. That said, let me take you through the opportunity I (somehow) survived.
My two year old daughter has a respiratory system that tends to go from a sniffle to a raging wheeze-fest that leaves her resembling a life-long chain smoker. After painfully listening to her breathing and realizing our at-home breathing treatments weren’t helping, I decided to take her to Urgent Care for an after-hours visit with a medical professional. We get to the waiting room and find out we are third in line…. Eh. Add in the elderly gentleman that came in with heart attack symptoms and the young man that came in holding a blood-soaked kitchen towel (and possibly a finger tip in a ziploc baggie?) and we were instantly bumped to fifth in line. Double eh.
Now is as good of time as any to mention my two year old is potty training…. And showing recent signs of a serious regression. Now is an even better time to mention that this same beautiful little potty training two-year old has also recently developed a sudden fear of standard sized toilets.
Back at the Urgent Care, we are 30 minutes into our waiting room stint when I realize it’s been a LONG time since my little one has gone potty. I ask her if she needs to go… She says no. I suggest we try anyway… She says no. I decide to outsmart her by whisking her away to the nearest bathroom (as if she won’t catch on!) and offer her candy to sit on the toilet and potty. She totally freaks out…. Like, “Someone is chasing me with an ax and I am in the middle of a dark forest” freaks out. In my opinion, her response seemed unnecessarily excessive. In her opinion, she apparently didn’t want to go potty. We head back to the waiting room, where I say a silent prayer that somehow her body will dehydrate itself until we can get back home and she can relieve herself in her mini toilet in the privacy of our bathroom. We settle in and wait for our name to be called.
She is cuddling on my lap, I am texting my husband. Coincidentally, my exact text to him was: “M refuses to go potty on toilet. I hope she doesn’t pee on my leg!!” As if on cue, (and as if my intelligent little lady can actually read the words I wrote), I felt a sudden warmth on my leg…. Then the other leg…. Then wetness…. Then so much wetness that I could have sworn I was on the Log Ride at Adventureland getting soaked right there in my seat. Unlike the chlorinated water at a water park however, this was a foul smelling odor radiating from my daughter (or was it me?). I was unclear. But terrified.
Deciding to assess the situation outside of the eyes of my fellow Urgent Care patrons, I stood up with my daughter to walk back towards the bathroom. When I stood up, a warm liquid slid down the length of each of my legs and dribbled into my socks. Let me say that again. When I stood up, there was so much urine that soaked THROUGH my cotton sweatpants and onto my legs, that it DRIBBLED down my legs and I could then feel it soaking INTO my socks. Wow. To say that it was disgusting is an understatement. To say that I wanted to immediately rip my clothes off is a truth. To say that this was my first time ever being absolutely repulsed by my daughter is a sad reality.
My first thought was to pack up and head to the parking lot…. Call it a day and assume this little breathing situation would work itself out. I chose, instead, to pull up my big girl pants (literally) and carry on with life. Life that now involved urine soaked pants and putrid skin. Yuck.
In summation, my daughter has pneumonia (in both lungs – Eeeeek!), so it worked out well to stay. Despite the liquid stain surrounding my crotch, no one called me out and admitted to notice (thereby proving that nice people really do still exist!). Eventually, the pee dried, the meds were started, and I walked away with yet another amazing story for the scrapbook!
Good on you, I have never had that problem with my children, I don’t know how I would have acted, but you were very strong not to break in a situation like that.
I know you write this a long time ago, hope you never experience that situation again.
Sometimes, all you can do is LAUGH 🙂