Since Kaia was born, Chris and I have had an ongoing discussion about her poops and pees. Pediatricians and all healthcare professionals recommend it for parents to do for their babies since it’s the only way to know what actually went in (because… what goes in must also come out!). This is especially crucial if you are breastfeeding and especially nursing, since with direct breastfeeding, there is no other way to truly measure what the baby consumed. We used to keep a paper log, then a Google spreadsheet log. And then once Kaia turned 14 months of age, we would just have a verbal back and forth about it throughout the day or week. For us, we’re just trying to be good parents and track our child’s inputs and outputs, so we don’t see this being peculiar at all. We never saw it as something we liked or didn’t like to discuss; for us, it seemed like the responsible parent thing to do to ensure our child’s good health.

One funny thing I’ve noticed over the last four years now is that Chris’s parents are very, very uncomfortable with conversations around… the elimination of bodily wastes. It doesn’t matter if it’s pooping, peeing, or farting — they immediately look awkward and embarrassed, and his dad usually tries his best to quickly divert the conversation in another direction. He would shift in his seat, look another way where no one was to avert eye contact, and act as though no poop/pee conversation were happening at all. A number of times, his mom has gotten exasperated by the constant bodily waste conversation that she has exclaimed in many different ways, “My goodness! So much talk about poo and pee all the time! Will you still be keeping tabs on this for Kaia when she’s in her teens and 20s?”

Chris’s and my parents’ generation obviously had very different newborn/child-rearing advice than Chris and I’ve had. Things change and evolve over time, and I think on the surface, they do recognize this and try to follow our lead with most things we do for Kaia. With the poop/pee talk, there’s zero chance they could try to get us to stop it even if they wanted to because we’ll do what we need to do to ensure our child is healthy, nourished, and having the appropriate outputs in a day. It’s more just amusing to me how some people are so uncomfortable with actions that need to be done by all of us every single day, multiple times a day. It’s true that none of us really needs an audience there when we’re on the toilet or farting. But with child rearing, the conversation does need to be had. It gets even more hilarious because Chris and I comment now on how big and stinky her poops can be (this is physical proof that she eats a varied, well-rounded diet!) as well as how long her pees are, and his parents think we’re a little crazy about this. We also tell them how she loves to see her poops and peer closely into the toilet bowl after. And she loves to get reactions from me yelling out in Chinese, “What a big poop!” Sometimes, she even insists that I come over to see it when Chris is in charge of wiping her and going through the hand-washing motion together.

I thought about his parents’ lack of comfort around all things toilet related when we were browsing a shop along Chapel Street in South Yarra today, and we came across these games called “Poop Bingo and “Fart Bingo.” The Bingos are geared for playing with kids, and they are exactly what you expect them to be: they show you caricatures of animals and their different types of poop, as well as… what may come out of an animal’s anus when they fart (apparently, those potential… things that can come out are not technically poop!). I jokingly suggested to Chris that we buy them to play with his parents, and he chuckled and thought it could be funny. The better (and cheaper) side of me decided not to get it because the amusement would be short-lived, and they might play it once or twice with us and then stop. That probably would not be the greatest ROI (return on investment) on a gift.