August 13, 2010

The Poop Rating Scale

No one tells you this before you become a parent, but as it turns out, one of your most important jobs as a caregiver is to monitor your baby's bowel movements.  How much?  How often?  What color and consistency?  Knowing the answers to these questions and recognizing when the answers change is of the utmost importance in monitoring a newborn's health.  The 1st signs of sickness can often be seen in an unusual number 2.

Now, I'm a mature, responsible man.  A husband and father, a homeowner, college educated with an accomplished professional resume.  I'm more than able to get past the grossness and take a clinical approach to doody duty.  Still, like every other man in the world, there's a part of me that still thinks and acts like a 13-year old, and having the daily opportunity to describe poops has been a delight to my less sophisticated sensibilities.  This combination of the need and want to talk openly, accurately and ridiculously about each and every excrement led to the creation of the Poop Rating Scale.

Level 1
Barely a poop at all, a 1 is entirely absorbed into the diaper lining.  Essentially, a 1 is an unfortunate fart.

Smells Worse Than:  An unused diaper, but just barely

Level 2
A 2 is basically a small, thin streak of poo, like a sauce artfully garnishing the edge of a plate at the world's worst restaurant.

Smells Worse Than:  Milk the day after the expiration date

Level 3

Where a 2 is a streak, a 3 is a rectangle.  Small, spread out but neat, and ultimately unremarkable.  Generally a 3 will be a follow-up to an 8 or a 9 rather than a standalone poop.

Smells Worse Than:  Socks post-exercise

Level 4
The first level of substantial movements.  A 4 is messy, smelly and colorful, there's just not a whole lot of it.  These are annoying because you have to wipe a little bit off of everything.

Smells Worse Than:  A NYC subway station in August

Level 5
Exactly what you'd expect a dirty diaper to look like if you've never seen one before.  Proportional in size to the baby, well contained in the diaper.  5's never happen.

Smells Worse Than:  Who knows?  Like I said, 5's never happen

Level 6
A 6 never starts out as a 6.  What happens is, you open up the diaper and find a dark, muddy mess and immediately think "oh no, we've got an 8 on our hands!"  However, once you get to work you realize that it's not all that big, packed pretty neatly and is easy to clean up, making you downgrade it from an initial 8 to just a 6.

Smells Worse Than:  Uneaten chinese food that's been sitting in the garbage for three days.

Level 7
7's are more messy than big.  There's not a whole lot of volume in a 7, but since they're on the soupy side they get everywhere.  What makes a 7 particularly difficult to deal with is that, once exposed, they become a magnet for kicking baby feet.

Smells Worse Than:  A hippie commune

Level 8
Work is getting done when we get to an 8.  Serious grown-up work.  For example, Grace tends to get bellyaches for two or three day stretches.  They only clear up after she achieves an 8.  Pungent, large and intimidating, 8's are typified by their dense, wet concrete-like texture.

Smells Worse Than:  Amy Winehouse

Level 9
The messiness of a 7 with the volume and shape of an 8.  9's are not for the weak of heart.  The only saving grace of a 9 is that it's fully contained within the diaper, if only just barely.  The origins of a 9 can be clearly determined by their smell, much like a fine wine.  "This poop is a fruity, oatmealy blend, infused with just a hint of vitamin D drops."

Smells Worse Than:  If New Jersey and Staten Island had a stinky land baby

Level 10
"Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds".

Smells Worse Than:  Medieval Europe during the Black Plague

3 comments:

  1. That was descriptive, disgusting and utterly hilarious. How would you rate the blow-out delicate Grace delivered at my house? I'm thinking that was at least a 7, no?

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  2. That "smells worse than" scale was pure genius.

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