Question: Why were we not made aware?

Warning: This post is not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach.

There are so many books out there that tell you what to expect when you’re, er, expecting, giving birth, nursing, and raising infants, toddlers, preschoolers, school age kids and teens.

But there’s no mention of duck scum.

This is somehow an unfortunate oversight on the part of the thousands of so-called parenting experts/river guides who attempt to guide us through the unpredictable and wild rapids of raising children.

Sleep training? Check. Potty training? Check. “Positive Discipline”? Check. Disgusting things you’ll encounter on your journey through parenthood? Not so much. There’s no mention of those in those books with the serene, Holly Hobbie/Laura Ashley Stepford mother on the cover holding her (quiet and satisfied) baby. No stains on those clothes either.

When you’re pregnant, if you’re unfortunate, you throw up. A lot. They say you get sicker if you’re carrying a girl, and that, ladies and gents, appears to be a wise old wive’s tale. I was sick as a dog with my daughter. I even puked in a nearby garbage can in the lobby of my OB’s building, then went back upstairs and got hooked up on an IV for dehydration. (I drank more water than the Colorado River during that pregnancy, but I couldn’t stay hydrated.) Vomiting in public places. There was no mention of that in the pregnancy books.

There’s an occasional mention of things like baby poop, and how it changes in color and texture as the baby takes solid food. But nowhere did it explain how rank the odor was, and how HUGE these dumps the baby takes are. The volume output is impressive. And the spreadability factor is unbelievable and can even end up on thighs and toes. The dreaded thigh poop? No mention. The frightening poop slick up the back of the onesie? Nada.

As a child moves on through early infancy to toddlerhood, there are plenty of messes: crushed cheerios, congealed spaghetti flung far from the high chair, mucous, mucous, and more mucous. I was only prepared for the latter because I had taught preschool for a couple of years in the 1990s. We had one little boy who had so much snot that every time he sneezed it was like Niagara Falls. Gnarly.

As the children learn to use the toilet, they don’t necessarily tend to be neater/cleaner. That’s a myth. Have you ever seen (and smelled) a pee puddle from behind the toilet, where some lad’s aim was a bit off? Have you ever had to clean poop scoot marks off your toilet seat, floor, and various towels that were the result of an ill-fated attempt to wipe one’s own self?

Not in the books.

I always thought that some of the nasty secretions we dealt with in our young children would slowly taper off with the advent of correct toilet paper use, self-administered nose blowing and hand washing. And they have, a little.

Enter the duck scum.

Duck scum, as you may already know, is the gunky, black, and rank gunk that comes out of bath time squeeze toys if they are not regularly drained and rinsed out. The usual suspect is the rubber ducky. Ernie did not mention this foul substance in his Sesame Street ode. But he should have.

I can only imagine what we have in store for us as our kids rocket into tween and teenhood.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.