Tuesday, April 19, 2011

The Seventh Food Group

One of my Mama friends, Mrs O, nearly made me throw up the other day.

Unlike the last time I felt sick, which was as a result of rockin' out at an awesome party being a bit dehydrated, on this occasion it was preempted by a story about her son, Mr Messy, and his latest snack. Being the wonderful friend I am, after gagging then laughing I asked if I could blog it.

Last weekend Mr & Mrs O grabbed the keys to their new house and opened the door to find the place completely filthy. Crap left in cupboards, junk in the yard and bugs everywhere. Delightful stuff.

To her credit, Mrs O went head down, bum up and had the whole place spick and span within a weekend thanks to some hard yakka, a couple of cockroach bombs and using up all her babysitting credits. There is obviously something seriously wrong with her me because I've lived here for years and I still have boxes that I haven't unpacked.

A few days later, after the lovely new-home excitement has worn off a bit and it was back to the usual mundane tasks of mamahood, Mrs O turned around to find Mr Messy chomping happily away on something... something brown, with six legs and wings... a gigantic cockroach. Gag.
Image Credit: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

After doing the whole 'my child is eating something icky' dance, complete with arm waving, she remembered the cockroach bombs. So not only was Mr Messy eating a brown bomber, he was eating a bombed brown bomber.

PANIC STATIONS! A poison cockroach!!!

Mrs O kept her cool and rang the Poisons Information Centre - should she give him milk? water? induce vomiting? Apparently the amount of poison he would have ingested was minimal and that it's not really harmful to humans anyway. Phew. They did tell her to give him a drink to make sure he washed it all down and there wasn't any left in his mouth to choke on... which induced her own vomiting (and my own).

So I put the call out on Twitter, asking people to name the grossest thing their child had ever eaten, half because I wanted to reassure her she wasn’t the only one and half because I wanted to know just how much I have to prepare myself for as a Mama... after hearing some of the results I'm thinking I will have to either be really vigilant or develop and iron stomach.

Some of my favourites were:

@MotherMoments Whose son was such a fan of kitty litter they had to rig up a system on the laundry door so the cats could get in but he couldn't;

@Our_Adventures, @TutuAmes and @CollinsWeribee Whose children all ate dog poo (some more than once!);

@MeganBlandford and @katesaysstuff whose kids both ate worms, then remembered their table manners and ate dirt with a spoon;

@Hey_Bambini whose child ate an old piece of toast crust with a mysterious green substance on it (was quite likely to be mould but will be referred to as "avocado") that they found in a basket of toys in a café;

And Mrs O – you’re not alone:

@MrsGMach’s son ate a cockroach and after she fished it out of his mouth and threw it away, he went and got it back out of the bin & kept munching!

@MummyMcTavish ate an entire cockroach when she was little even though her Mum found her part way through – she left her eating it so she could get a tissue, not wanting to touch it!

So what is the grossest thing you or your child has even eaten?

For a poisons emergency call the Poisons Information Centre on 13 11 26

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Glowless rocked the Aussie Bloggers Conference thanks to

20 comments:

  1. We found Baby T out on the lawn with a nugget of dog poo in his mouth the other week. I nearly puked.

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  2. Score! I got a mention in a Glowless blog (even if it was because Seagull was a feral and ate used kittly litter)! The funny thing is, within a week or two of rigging up the laundry door, Seagull lost all interest in kitty litter. He now wants to get into the laundry to watch the "washing machime". Thunder Maker is still paranoid that Seagull will want to eat the "kitty shitty stuff" as he calls it and just about blows a fuse if I forget to close the laundry off. Oh, and Seagull now has his own "washing machime" - he uses the box that forms the bottom of the scratching post to dump things into, then makes circles with his hands to imitate the swirling motion of the machine.

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  3. Yum Yum.
    These kids will probably grow up to be food critics.
    Just scared that if they do, the standards of restaurants could be lowered. After all, if they've eaten poo and bugs, some undercooked chicken could be considered a delicacy.
    Haha!

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  4. Awesome! Never thought I'd ever see my own kids as normal/mild. Which can only mean they're extra covert at whatever dodgy crap (literally?) they are eating.

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  5. I never saw this tweet! Having worked in childcare we've found some children have....special tastes. One kid was a fan of poop. Not dog poop, no no no but his own poo, and if he didn't have any and was hungry he wasn't shy in digging some out of the other kids nappies! Gross.
    (Of course this would be during change time when you'd be rounding the kids up to change their nappies, we didn't leave them in poop all day i promise. To make matters....well more gross this kid was 2 at the time, old enough to know poop is poop!)

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  6. It's the weeing in the bath and then drinking the water that gets to me.......

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  7. Apparently I used to eat dry dog food as a child!!

    And frozen uncooked fish fingers.

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  8. The first Easter Farmboy was allowed chocolate (he would have been about 15 months old) he got into a stash of eggs on my bedside table. He ate so many he vomited and then proceeded to eat the chocolate vomit too.... Easter eggs are now put somewhere high and rationed a bit in our house to prevent chocolate vomits.

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  9. Wish someone had written this blog when Mr A ate dog poo, wouldn't have been so hysterical. That was 8 years ago and didn't even know anything about Facebook & Twitter back then. Thank god for social media. Well done @Glowless, great topic xx

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  10. Grossest. Post. Evah.

    But glad my kid's in good company at least!

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  11. This is obviously one of the benefits of having a Fussy Eater. She hasn't eaten anything gross...yet.

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  12. Eww lala! I'm so glad the kids I looked after have chewed on nothing more mysterious than a rock. Well the six year old had a habit of hugging lamp posts, which clearly had dog pee on them. He thought I was pulling his leg when I said that dogs pee on posts instead of the ground and only believed me when we finally saw a dog in action! Didn't stop him from continually hugging lamp posts- he would just look at me and go "oh, I forgot!"

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  13. ewwww... that should teach this stuff in schools... if that doesn't encourage abstinence I don't know what will!

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  14. Amy@New AdventuresApril 19, 2011 at 5:48 PM

    My 16 month old has eaten bird poo - twice! - and about a month ago i was just a little too slow in stopping him before he chowed down on a Daddy LongLegs spider...mmm, delicious!

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  15. I'm so glad I'm not the only one whose child eats revolting things!

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  16. My little man has eaten his own poo before - leaked out of his nappy & he clearly wondered what the brown stuff on the carpet was. F.O.U.L!!

    My sister apparently ate snail (common garden variety, not fancy french cuisine) & I was hospitalised as a kid for getting into a bottle of my brothers anti-seizure meds.

    Gotta love kids :)

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  17. Oh my! What a great post. My youngest son has a thing for snails, which I think is extra disgusting. But my eldest tops it all. Crunchy munchy millipedes. Can I just say that smelling my child's sweet breath after those babies is just awful?

    Thanks for sharing. Glad to know my lads are the only ones! xx

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  18. OMG! Cockroach's - they make my skin crawl...and l thought mouldy toast was bad - that takes the cake! Great post

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  19. My little darling enjoyed cricket just the other day- I blogged about it here:http://slightlymoredepththanateaspoon.blogspot.com/2011/03/in-which-my-daughter-ingests-her-first.html

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  20. I'm a little late on this but I linked here through another post. My parents never had to wash my mouth out- I did it for them. I took a bite out of a bar of soap when I was really young. Literally. *facepalm*

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