My Baby Smells

Like some people love the new car smell, I love the new baby smell. Nothing smells quite like it, so fresh and clean and sweet. I love to lean down and inhale the smell right off a new baby's head. I don't think anyone knows what causes that wonderful smell. And, like many things in early childhood, it fades so fast.

Unfortunately, Penelope does not smell so sweet. One of the many benefits of breastfeeding is virtually odorless poo. It really is nice not to have to smell that telltale stench, letting you know someone needs a diaper change, for the first few months. Also, considering breastfed babies poo six or more times a day, it clearly was Mother Nature's design to prevent us from rejecting our young due to olfactory intolerance. With both Samantha and Ella we saw the benefit. Penelope did not get the memo.

She is the most gaseous, foul smelling baby I have ever encountered. If I wasn't holding the baby emitting obvious noises, I would blame it on the dog, so foul is the odor. If she were an adult, I would wonder what exactly she had eaten to create such a stench. She poos only every other day, filling her diaper so fast and full it explodes, leaving a brown stream running down her legs and requiring rapid wardrobe changes to prevent said liquid from contacting anything else. In between, she passes gas seemingly continually. Something in her intestinal tract changes the sweet, nourishing milk into an eyebrow curling affront to the senses.

Samantha and Ella find the situation highly amusing. "Mommy, the baby farted," followed by a symphony of gaffaws can be heard in our house multiple times a day. Ella can be seen holding her wrinkled nose while saying, "Mommy, baby stinky poop."

My only hope is that like the sweet smell of a newborn, this will fade to a distant memory...soon.