Sometime in December Maya got hit with a stomach bug. Not the barfing kind, but the other one, you know the ‘D-word’. She was pretty sick. Running to the toilet, having an accident in her pants in a public place (oh what fun!) and not really understanding what was going on. She even put herself to sleep for a nap when she got home… after she basically declared that she would never nap again. She was a bit freaked out by the whole thing. It passed quickly and we were all relieved.
Afterwards, I wanted to help speed her recovery so I purchased some intestinal flora for kids, you know little animal shaped vitamins with probiotics in them. The bottle had little hippos on it and Maya LOVED them. And why wouldn’t she? They taste like candy. She asked me why she was allowed to have these ‘candies’ every day, in fact twice a day without question. Afterall, I ration all her other sweets religiously. Naturally, she was perplexed by the free for all allowed by these magical ‘hippo candies’. So I explained that they would help give her “log poops” and could help prevent diarrhea.
Well somehow she got freaked out that she was going to have diarrhea every time she went to the bathroom unless she had the hippo candy in advance and she was having these anxiety attacks before every bowel movement, holding it in and frantically asking if she was going to have a healthy BM before every bathroom trip and double checking that she had taken her hippo candy. Poor kid,she became obsessed with the consistency of her poops! It was a bit of a scene. We worked hard to convince her that getting a stomach bug is actually rare, it doesn’t happen often.
Finally, after a month of more poo discussion than I ever thought I’d participate in, she is over it and has stopped asking me every day if she is going to have diarrhea and has stopped obsessing over her probiotics.
Convince me we’re normal here, what does your toddler obsess about?
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