Poop Sprayer Nostalgia

My friend Heather has asked to borrow my poop sprayer. Any minute now I'll go get it out of the "cloth diapering" bin in the garage. And, oh, the memories will emerge from the bin right along with the diapering supplies.

I cloth diapered my first three children. Little John, though, has known nothing but disposables on his bottom. Sorry, John. Sorry, budget. Sorry, landfill. At one point, I even had three kids at once in cloth. This is because the oldest was still in PullUps (which I found a cloth version of) before the girls were potty-trained. So I consider myself a cloth diapering pro. I have six years of it on my mom resume. This will do me no good anywhere, but someone should applaud me. I was not always a pro, especially when I tried new things like the poop sprayer.

The poop sprayer is a handy device, much like a kitchen faucet sprayer, but you attach it to your toilet plumbing. Then, when it's time to dislodge a poo from a cloth diaper, you are SUPPOSED to simply hold the poopy diaper over the toilet, cleverly aim the sprayer at the poop, and spray toward the toilet bowl. Then you flush, toss the diaper into the pail, and go on your merry way.

Let me be the one to tell you --- that thing harnesses some serious water pressure. And the first poop I experimented with was... shall we say... NOT neat and tidy. Unsuspecting, I unleashed the full force of the water and when it came in contact with the poop - there was a crazy splash emergency of sorts. All over my bathroom walls. All over the toilet. And of course all over me. I'm sure I cussed. Probably a lot. And spent the next twenty-five minutes cleaning up what should have been a NON mess.

Over time, I became more proficient with the sprayer. And it resided a long while in my bathroom in Yucaipa. When it came time to sell our house, however, I dismantled the whole system because of the constant faint odor of poo. That odor goes along with the scent of saved money, though - and the satisfaction of doing your part for the environment. But now I live stench-free in a disposable-diaper world and will soon happily send off the sprayer to Sacramento.

Heather, if you're reading, Best Wishes! May the poop sprayer give you many happy rinses. It's positively WAY better than the old system of swishing the poopy mess around in the toilet bowl by hand. I give my mom huge props for doing that my whole babyhood.

Someday, if I have a baby into my forties, and my energy to cloth diaper returns - send the poop sprayer back my way and we'll get reacquainted.