Finding Joy in My Daughter's Poop
“Parenting is difficult, but it’s the greatest joy you’ll ever know”.
My parents recently visited, staying with us for a week so they could spend time with their granddaughter. The morning they left my dad said something that has stuck with me, “Parenting is difficult, but its the greatest joy you’ll ever know.”
The first thing that came to mind when he said this was the enormous amount of poop that exploded out of my daughter’s diaper and streamed onto him while we were enjoying some beers at a local brewery (the first in a string of blowouts that happened over the next few weeks). The greatest joy huh? But despite this - admittedly hilarious, but also disgusting - experience he still chose to leave us with those as his parting words.
And while my husband and I are still novices at this parenting thing, with a long way still to go, our daughter really is one of the greatest joys of our life despite the chaos and the difficulty and the poop (so much poop). This is something I think delightfully surprised both my husband and I - that parenting is so much better than we realized. The truth about joy is that very often, when looking back at my life, joy always seems to be associated with hardship. As if, to truly feel joy, there needs to be some challenge or difficulty to face, live with, or overcome. That the suffering we experience carves out space to hold joy. And I believe the joy is so much deeper for it. So the late nights, the explosive diapers, the crying that can feel endless, are all challenges we must overcome, the reward of which is this deep joy at the existence of our children.
More, I’ve found that when I have reached for or discovered joy it is as if the whole world bursts forward with gifts. I notice that I begin to notice. I see more of the small and wonderful things in the world, like the first buds of spring, the shapes in the clouds, how my daughter is completely surprised by her shadow... joy begetting joy. So when my daughter’s diaper explodes, rather than bemoan this as one of the downsides of parenting, I laugh. Because it is, despite its immense grossness, hilarious. And when I laugh, she laughs and all of a sudden we are both finding joy in her poop. Life is wild and parenting even wilder, so what else can we do but find the humor in the chaos?
Heather x
P.S. I’m fairly certain my daughter is pooping as I hold her right now. Better go check it asap, before it explodes.