My last post was so heavy with our loss that I’m in need of some comic relief … and today it comes from our fuzzy foster baby’s tiny butt during a church service.

But first, a question: Do all babies have the capacity to fart far louder than it would seem possible for their little bodies? Or is it just because the milk allergy has wreaked havoc on my kids’ poor intestines?

So Albin has always had a semi-irrational fear of Mariah letting out a huge, hairy fart in the middle of a sermon. He’s mentioned it to me quite a few times. Recently, that not-so-irrational fear was realized.

We were visiting a friend’s church for their baby’s dedication ceremony. During the service, one of our friends who was sitting two rows behind us came and asked to hold Fuzzy and I obliged but whispered an ominous warning about Fuzzy being a ticking time bomb due to his milk allergy.

About fifteen minutes into the sermon, the congregation had settled into a respectful silence as they digested the pastor’s words. Just as I started down the road of my own thoughtful pondering, I was startled by the sound of a huge, sick-nasty fart ripping through the air. I immediately recognized that juicy, forceful, grown man-caliber flatulence as coming from 15 pound Fuzzy and I lost it. I instantly reverted back to the fifth grade version of myself and got the laughy-shakes. You know, the ones you can’t stop even if you try. I tried to do a sly glance back at my friends which proved to be a terrible decision because seeing her hold him away from her in case he were to blow made me laugh even more.

Just when I thought maybe I was just uber-sensitive to my own kid’s fart-noise and thought maybe not many people had noticed, Fuzzy let out his signature poop grunt that never fails to draw attention. And then of course, not one to disappoint, he reared again and forced out another grunt from the depths of his soul. At this point, I was a lost cause. I don’t know how the guy sitting in the row between ours kept it together, especially as I tried and miserably failed to be a respectable adult.

As I tried to compose myself, I heard my friend’s husband hissing, “Tricia, help!” I turned around and saw that as she held Fuzzy’s rear away from her white shirt, a stream of spit-up started flowing out of his other end. Now we were causing a scene. I grabbed my diaper bag and my kid and made for my escape while avoiding eye contact with anyone.

The best part: Albin wasn’t there. He had just taken Mariah out because she was also causing a scene (trying to grab the guy in front of us). No fear, as I passed Albin, I conveyed my stinky story and he also lost it.

Unfortunately, this church is still being built, so the service was actually being held outdoors in a big tent … which means there are currently no real toilets. No way in heck was I going to try to clean up the poop explosion in a sweltering porta-potty with no baby station.  I opted for our trunk. At least then I wouldn’t be subjected to Fuzzy’s stench AND the rest of the crowd’s Costa Rican sun-ripened waste rotting in the plastic latrine.

I had a “mom fail” and in my rush to get to church on time, I forgot to bring the little changing cover thing, so he had to be changed directly on the trunk fabric. Just as I laid him down in the back and got my adult on, I saw we had a full-blown explosion on our hands. There was poop up his back all the way to his neck. It was everywhere. The worst is when you have to take off their onesies after these explosions. The mess is hard to contain as you try to wiggle their squirming arms out of those tiny sleeves. And then you have to get it over their head without somehow pasting poop all over their shoulders and grazing their hair. By now, Fuzzy was wailing. He had poop all over every extremity (I failed getting his soiled pants off as well), and the more he wiggled, the more he rubbed his excrement deep into the trunk fabric and all over his body.

Just when I thought I had been completely defeated, the wind picked up and started blowing the poopy wipes all over the trunk and the baby. I started frantically grabbing the wipes, forgetting that the makeshift bathroom had no sink to wash my now poop-encrusted hands.

Somehow, I managed to change the baby into new clothes and clean up the trunk with half a box of wipes. I grabbed the sandwich-sized Ziploc bag we used for our toll coins, stuffed his clothes in and left them to steam in the back of our boiling car (puke). I put Fuzzy in the football hold since I wasn’t convinced the wipes had truly gotten the poo off my hands and trudged over to the porta-potty looking for some sort of running water source. I was a hot mess. I was sweating profusely (no surprise there) and flushed from the exertion. Near the outhouse, there was a man with a bucket of water who looked at me pitifully and tried to help by pouring water over my hands.

Needless to say, we left church early and Albin howled with laughter all the way home. It also goes without saying that I didn’t even try to salvage the steamed Ziploc baggy and its contents. To whoever lent me that shirt for him: sorry, not sorry, it went straight to the trash.

While poop explosions are nothing new for this mom of two kids with milk allergies, this one probably takes the cake for most despicable, but also the most hilarious. You might think we’re juvenile, but God knows there is nothing like a great poop story to give Albin and me a good soul-cleansing belly laugh.