August 18, 2008
The Shart Heard Round the World
Posted in Yucky Mama tagged embarrassing situations, food poisoning, illness, shart, stomach flu at 11:00 pm by chilloutmama
It all started with a shart. Of course, I made my husband swear he would never utter a word about it to anyone, and now I’ve published this information for anyone to see.
We had just had dinner at a sandwich shop that opened down the street from our house. I was so excited about this – finally, some good dining options within walking distance! I had an Asian chicken wrap that seemed innocuous enough, followed by dessert: frozen yogurt from the shop next door.
I felt just fine, but then the shart came about half an hour later while I was nursing Donovan. Please tell me that wasn’t what I think it was. A shart is many things: disgusting, messy, humiliating, but I also found it alarming. I get disturbed when my body does anything involuntarily; incontinence had been a major concern of mine in the wake of childbirth, as it is for many women. Turns out I didn’t have to worry about it until my child was eleven months old. Go figure.
The shart was my first clue that something funky was going on with my body. Then came the gas. I should invent a new word to describe these emissions because they were by far the foulest thing my body has ever produced. We’re talking open-sewer-littered-with-dead-rats bad. I couldn’t believe my nose. And my stomach was making crazy sounds, crackling and popping like an e.coli-laced bowl of Rice Krispies. I went to bed feeling uneasy, but assumed it would pass and I’d feel better in the morning.
No such luck. I woke up three hours later with a sharp pain in my chest and spent the rest of the night alternately writhing on the bathroom floor and curled up in a hot bath in between bouts of spewing from both ends of my body. I won’t go into any more detail than that because I feel that may already have assaulted my readers’ senses with enough vivid imagery and, for lack of a better word, smell-agery.
Five hours and one aborted trip to the ER later, I felt normal again. The chest pain that drove me there disappeared at just about the time we pulled into the parking lot – it must’ve been the gas. Of course, this made me look like a crazy hypochondriac, but I’m blessed with a husband who doesn’t hold these things against me. Not for long, anyway.
What does this particularly lovely anecdote have to do with being a new mother? Nothing, really. I just like seeing the word shart in print.
