And it all smells vaguely of sour milk.

When you become a parent, you tolerate a lot more grossness than you ever thought you could.

This morning, as my child sat on my lap, a nuclear explosion went off in her diaper. The windows shook, the leaves blew off the trees outside, a small but distinct mushroom cloud hovered over the house for several minutes. After the dust settled, when I picked her up off my lap, I realized that said lap was soaked. Thankfully, not with anything solid. From what I can figure out, satisfied with her work, she peed on top of the nuclear waste inside the diaper which, with its hydrophobic qualities, resulted in the pee getting sheared off to the side and out the leg and on to my pyjamas.

This was mere minutes after she woke up, smiled, and shot a stream of clear spit-up all across the (clean, I might add) sheets on my bed. The kid actually caught air with the projectile vomit.

A year ago, if someone's kid puked or crapped on me, I would have smiled politely and handed the kid back to the parents to deal with, all the while choking back bile in the back of my throat. Ah, how far we've come. Bodily fluids are now our life. She's fed from my body and she digests it all and eliminates it with hers. It's beautiful, and it's ick. And not only are we used to the ick, we analyze it. 'What colour was the poop?" "Green." "Neon green or brownish green?" "More brownish. Kind of sludgey. And it's got clumps." "Oh, that's good."

I now understand how people can go out in public with white spit up stains on their shirts, or worse. It's just.. everywhere. All the time. You barely notice it anymore. When I put on clean clothes, I frolic in them for a few minutes, enjoying the smell of nothing, which isn't a smell I smell much anymore. And then I pick up my daughter and boom. Done. I've been baptized with baby.

It could be worse. The three days we had her on formula before my milk came in resulted in black, toxic diapers straight from the tar sands. The reintroduction of breast milk meant that the diapers subsequently only smelled like sour milk as opposed to the armpit of Beelzebub. So we count our blessings.

Still, I'll add "smelling like that" to the list of things that I won't miss in a few years. No longer will I sit on my bed and wonder where the spilled milk is. No longer will the couch frighten away visitors. I'll miss most things about having a newborn, but trust me: that's not one of them.