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If you have a weak stomach, stop reading here! And this is a long one. You're welcome :)

I can write about this now as I can laugh about it, but when it happened a year ago, there was no laughing. It was a day. One of those days where I felt as though I was drowning. Every time I came up for air, something pushed me back into the current.

I was overjoyed with the birth of our 4th child. He was only 6 weeks old during this time so sleep wasn't his strong suit and cognitive abilities weren't mine. I drug myself out of bed after getting an hour of uninterrupted sleep to wake my older two children up to get them ready for school. My husband was out of town so in all honesty, I was already on guard for something wild to happen. Chaos (more than the usual chaos) always seemed to erupt while he was away.

The morning started off normal. Kids dressed, fed and teeth brushed. My little girl began to complain of an earache so I took her temperature, and sure enough, fever! A friend came to pick my oldest up for school and I began to make my daughter oatmeal as that was the ONLY thing she wanted and NEEDED it to help her ear feel better. My new born was screaming as it was also his turn to eat and my 1 year old was MIA, so, I took that as the perfect time to make her oatmeal. I was trying to soothe the screaming baby, make the oatmeal and keep myself calm enough to smile through it on my 42 minutes of sleep the night before. My little girl came running into the kitchen and said "MOM! Roy is eating the dog food!" Of course he was. He was quiet and I allowed myself to pretend he was in the other room practicing his fine motor skills. He quickly followed behind his sister and I said "Roy! No no. Dog food is yucky. Spit it out." He was thrusting his tongue against the roof of his mouth as if it were loaded with thick peanut butter. Possibly peanut butter flavored dog food?! It was in that moment I realized, oh no...no, no, no. This wasn't dog food. It was dog POOP.

I forgot to mention the dog earlier. I let her out to use the bathroom right before I began to make the oatmeal, but because she also needed attention, she clearly held out to relieve herself on our carpet. And while #3 (the 1 year old) WAS in fact practicing his fine motor skills, he decided to sample what he found while doing so. LORD...HELP ME! I feel like I am drowning.

As I reached in his mouth to see what was in it, he reached out his hand to me saying "uck, ucky." It was a hand full of crap. Literally, dog poop. As I began to stand in awe and shock, he began to show me exactly how tough he was and began to puke. I screamed "it isn't dog food, it is dog poop" and my little girl began screaming and crying. My poor little guy began up-chucking all things reminiscent of his breakfast and Katie's (our dog) poo. At one point the child puked an entire segment that looked quite similar to a mandarin orange, but he hadn't eaten any mandarin oranges :( In my panic and shock I rushed him into the bathroom, began flushing his mouth out and running a bath in the tub to wash him up. As I filled the bath, I ran back into the kitchen to clean up the puke and low and behold, the dog was already taking care of that for me. She too, needed a bath now and was officially on my s#^! list, pun intended! Thia was grosser than anything I had experienced to date as a mother, and I thought I had endured some pretty disgusting things. God help me. I just kept praying. Keep my calm. God help me...

Well, he did. After bathing the child and dog and calling poison control and them assuring me that wasn't even the grossest thing he could have eaten, they encouraged me to have him checked at his pediatric office. Vomiting was the best thing for him so that was a silver lining. More like a brownish-green lining but okay!

Since I was already headed to the doctor's office to have #2 (my little girl) checked, they could check him out too. So while I made the appointments and began to finally nurse my poor baby after he screamed in hunger for 45 minutes, I realized, I don't have a car. You see the day before, my Suburban broke down on the side of the road and I insisted to my husband I didn't need a rental car as he was only going to be gone 1 night and didn't need to go anywhere. I called my best friend, in a heightened panic as usual, and she came over to save me.

By the time she got there the doctor had called back and said they were very overbooked and didn't need to see the poop eating child as there was nothing they could do for him. I needed to watch his diapers for the next 2 weeks and make sure there were no worms etc in them...excuse me, WHAT?! You see the risk of him eating the dogs poop was that if the dog had worms or parasites, he could get them too, but we wouldn't know that for a week or 2 and would find it in his stools...oh, okay cool!

Anyhow, so he was staying home and I was only taking the 5 year old girl who was in pain to the doc in my best friends Suburban while she watched her own 2 boys, my poo eater and my newborn. So, we went. We waited. And waited. Got put back into a room and waited some more. By this time my friend needed her Suburban back as we had been gone 2 hours already and she had an appointment of her own she had to get to.

My poor baby girl was crying in pain "no! I don't want to leave. I need medicine. My ear hurts;" she was holding onto the edge of the table with white knuckles and I pried her fingers off and we both walked out in tears. I felt defeated.

I did what any girl would do and called her daddy in tears on my way back home. He cancelled the rest of his day and made his way to our house. My sweet friend loaded her boys and went on her way, praying for me on her way out. Once my dad arrived, he loaded my little girl and drove her to another office where she finally got some help and relief. Thank you God for parents who show up and help.

By the time they got home it was nearly 3 in the afternoon and my oldest boy was going to be home soon. I sat down in the chair after putting both little boys down for a nap and closed my eyes for a moment of relief. They opened again when I got a text from my bestie, the one who saved me earlier, that read something like this: "school nurse just called..." Her little girl had lice.

Poor thing, I thought. It happens so often and it is a lot to deal with. And I continued to think. The "poor thing" was the little girl who's car seat my little girl rode in earlier that day to the unsuccessful trip to the doctor. Remember that current I felt like was pulling me under, it was back.

My little girl never did get lice. Thank you God for sparing me that time!! That was a day. Grossest day of my life so far. Grossest day, you were NOT fun. I didn't like you. I didn't like you at all, but, you didn't win. The next day wasn't so bad, especially after comparing it to you.

xoxo,

Mollie

Mommas,

Have you ever had a day like that? A day when you felt like you couldn't keep your head above water? Keep going. Keep praying. You are not alone. One day soon, you'll be able to give that no good very bad terrible day a giant smile and remember, love wins. The things we do for love. The things we endure for our little people. They are worth it. sometimes they're gross, but worth it.