But He's Not Very Grumpy

Lumpyhead has a hair across his ass.

Okay, not exactly.

This morning, Bump found a hair in Lumpyhead's diaper. "Look, a mama hair!" he called out.

"In his diaper?" I asked. "Or on the changing table?"

"In his diaper."

Bump has a buzzcut. Lumpyhead has thin hair that, while getting longer, is probably not more than three inches at the longest. If we find hair around the house, it's mine.

Unattached hair grosses me out. You think I would be over this by now, because my hair falls out a lot, but loose hair totally gives me the skeeves. The drawer I keep my hairbrush in is a nightmare. Every once in awhile I bite the bullet and clean it out, but most of the time I reach my hand in there and try not to think about it. My efforts to confine most of my shedding to the bathroom have been largely unsuccessful. My hair is all over the floor of my house, office, and car. Ick.

Blond or light-colored hair is even worse, because you can feel it, but you can't see it. Mine is at least dark enough that you can find the hair, pluck it off and throw it away. But it's still repulsive, even when it's mine.

It would have been no mystery to find a hair on the changing table. When I first wake up I'm even more prone to dropping a hair or three, and because Lumpyhead serves as my alarm clock, I often change his diaper first thing in the morning. I've found a stray hair on the changing table before. I was surprised, but not shocked, that a hair might turn up in the boy's pants.

But this hair wasn't transferred into his diaper from the changing table.

It's not a hair across his ass.

Lumpyhead has a hair in his ass.

He's pooping hair.

He apparently ate a loose hair, and it's working its way through.

Bump: I guess hair isn't very digestible.
Me: Yeah, you'd think the cellulose would break down more easily.
Bump: Huh. The stuff you learn when you spend so much time looking at another person's bunghole.

We discussed ways he might have ingested the hair. Did he just pick it up off the floor and eat it? Was it on one of his toys?

I can't tell you how horrifying I find this. My first thought was of my dad's childhood pet, a dog that died from eating a toy which obstructed its bowel. Could hair twist up Lumpyhead's digestive tract and kill him? (It's obviously coming out, so I'm pretty sure the answer is no.) Then I thought of the dreaded "hair tourniquet" that Aunt Bob told me about when her little guy was a newborn. Gah! (I obsessively checked Lumpyhead's fingers and toes for hair all the damn time.)

When I actually saw the strand, I was instantly reminded of my hair aversion. Poop really doesn't bother me at all. With Lumpyhead's butthole issues, I've done a rather intensive tour of duty at the terminal end of his digestive system, and I've been unfazed. Runny, solid, smelly, sticky, oily, green, brown, yellow, whatever comes at me, I'm fine. But hair? I could have fainted.

A loose hair. [shudder] Coming out of the boy's butt. [gasp] Which means he ate it. [thunk]