Is it good news or bad?

June 12, 2011

Is it good news or bad?

When i woke up this morning and went through to collect the twins for their first feed of the day (both of them still nurse at about 6am every morning, which is a lovely relaxed way to start each day together), i could hear a bit of a commotion coming from their room. i hurried in there to see what was happening and the first thing i saw was Finn standing up in his cot to look over into William's (nothing unusual there, it's how i usually find him when he's woken up), making his "Glah!" noise over and over again. Now, Finn's "Glah!" seems to be a word made up by him for the sole purpose of drawing attention to particularly spectacular messes or naughty things he manages to do. He says it with great pride, almost as if he's meaning "Look what i've done!" and he's always very surprised that i don't seem to share in his pride about those situations. So i quickly turned my attention to William, who was the focus of Finn's "Glah"ing and was greeted by the sight of him laying in his cot covered in poo.

It seems that dear little William had discovered the sensory joys of his own poo in the night and proceeded to empty his nappy of its contents by smearing it over himself, his bedding and his cot. Which Finn found a very impressive feat, hence all the "Glah"ing to congratulate William. (i actually found myself telling Finn "don't encourage him!", which looking back on it seems a funny thing to say to a 10 month old baby, but made sense to me at the time). After i'd got William and his cot cleaned up and his bedding in the wash and new bedding put on and both boys were happily nursing as i snuggled back in bed, i pondered some more on this incident and realised it can be viewed in 2 ways:

- good news! William has found a sensory experience that he enjoys (and so far there aren't that many of them) and not only has he discovered it for himself but he has also opened his hands up independently and kept them that way for quite some time in order to better spread this substance around and feel it properly.

- bad news! William has discovered the sensory joys of his own poo and made an awful mess with it and is likely to keep trying to get his hands into his nappy to spread it around everytime from now on.

Obviously i don't want to waste this opportunity to encourage William to explore with his hands (and flat hands at that!), but i'd rather not have him playing with his poo and i don't want Finn to pick up on the habit either, so i've come up with a plan:
1. get some clay today and mix it with water to make the exact same texture as his poo was and then provide William with plenty of opportunities to explore this substance instead.
2. make sure he can't access his nappy anymore by changing the way i dress him (he was wearing a baby-gro type thing last night which allowed him to put his hands inside the leg holes straight into the sides of his nappy), so that his legs are always covered.

You know what? Reading back this post it strikes me how calm i was about the whole thing really and how you have to be a mummy of a child with special needs to be able to see the positive side of them smearing with poo!