Meconium
Warning: Discussion of bodily fluids and scatological grossness along with a heaping dose of explicit language.
Last night, while attending one of Sammy's prenatal appointments, I learned that there's a shit to begin all shits. Yep, you read that correctly, every human debuts into this world with a uterine send-off of sewage muck.
Pardon my language; I would certainly prefer to call it by the far cuter nickname "poop," but this primordial ooze is a far cry from the tan-flavored droplets deserving of that one-syllable number two. Poop are the chocolate-shaded pebbles puppies, bunnies, and I thought my adorable daughter would pop out of their booties. But nooo, this sticky, dark tar-splatter consisting of mucus, amniotic fluid, bile -- and probably whatever those three witches were brewing at the start of Macbeth -- goes by the sinister and ominous moniker "MECONIUM."
Yes, "meconium is the earliest stool of a mammalian infant resulting from defecation" (Wikipedia).
MECONIUM. That's a fucking chemical element on the Periodic Table.
That's an assassination toxin the KGB abandoned for being TOO inhumane.
That's a goddamned metal band at Aftershock, and not one of the headliners either, but some thrash/death metal band playing in a field behind the somehow infinitely tamer Cannibal Corpse, selling their t-shirts with their name emblazoned in that frenetic illegible font so common with the extreme sub-genres.
Meconium makes GWAR clutch their pearls and apologetically mutter things like, "Oh geez, golly, this is all a bit too much."
We were informed that a nurse will likely change the first diaper, but in the event that none is available at the the time that, well, shit happens, we (see also: "I") will be responsible for this step. I am then to leave the "soiled" -- no, again, that word is far too cute -- annihilated diaper out for a nurse to retrieve. This left me lying in bed pondering such deep thoughts as: Is there a Meconium nurse? What do they do with the diaper? Do they have powers of divination they activate upon looking into that morass of murky splatter?
My thoughts wandered further …
Do they drink whiskey neat at the ends of their shifts and stare into the dark of their empty homes (because for some reason, by 9 pm last night, I imagined all the Meconium nurses living alone in massive echo-walled estates, like vigilante superheroes), and whisper into the night in their raspy superhero voices: "I've seen things that make ice run through the veins of hardened men?” Do these brave men and women even wince when they swallow the stinging amber liquor or is it as smooth as water for these hardened vets.
And the query that really kept me up late staring at the ceiling: Are they fucking paid enough? Because even though I honked in cheery solidarity last year when I saw Kaiser nurses striking, now I wonder if I should have parked illegally on the side of the boulevard, picked up a sign, and marched alongside them.
Look, I think I'm going to be as good a father as any dad who chooses to show up. I plan to change diapers. I have zero squeamishness about picking up after our pups on the walks. I pretty much know, on paper at least, what I'm signing up for.
But I've learned too much. I've now seen and heard things about the start of the human condition I never before fathomed. And for all my earthly worries of bringing Emerson Rose into a happy and safe home, I now know that if I can stare into the darkest recesses of meconium and live to talk about it, I can do anything.