I was having a really, really shitty week. I'm not talking your run-of-the-mill, got-a-flat-tire-was-late-to-work-in-the-rain kind of shitty. I am talking in the most base, literal, disgusting form of the word. My week was, literally, shitty, So shitty, I have to write about it.

I have three kids. I knew what I was doing when I signed up for this job, and I always thought I would be really good at it. I am nurturing, and patient. I am organized, intelligent, and great under pressure. My ability to multi-task puts a Swiss Army knife to shame. Yet, none of those qualifications could have prepared me to deal with this.

It started in the hospital, not even 24 hours after the birth of our first child, Jack, in 2003. I was basking in the glow of my proud accomplishment (and Darvocet), when my husband Mike turned to me with a startled expression.

"Uh, is this right?"

He was standing next to the isolette, at the foot of my hospital bed, holding out a tiny disposable diaper smeared with what appeared to be a small patch of tar, pitch black in color. We had read the books, and concurred that this was "meconium" the first of millions of bowel movements ("B.M.'s", in the biz) to be deposited by our sweet baby boy. We just didn't expect the smell of black death to be emanating from such a tiny little lump of excrement. How could something so small smell so deathly? Hadn't I taken my prenatal vitamins? Drank plenty of water? We figured it was just a fluke, instead of heeding it as the warning that it actually was.

A few months passed. Our sweet baby boy grew. Like many first-time parents, we received a "Diaper Genie" as a shower gift. This is a plastic, cylindrical contraption resembling a trash pail with a lid. The premise is that you step on the lid, the top opens, and you drop the soiled diaper inside, where it is somehow twisted, compacted, and gift wrapped into an un-offensive plastic covered poo packet. At first it even worked.

"This thing is great!" we told each other "What's the big deal with diapers, anyway?"

That was well and fine until it was time for the disgusting, bacteria-ridden Diaper Genie to be emptied out. I braved the task, gingerly knotting the end of the plastic, and carefully opening the bowels of the "Genie." Suffice it to say that the best visual comparison I can make here is the opening of the Ark of the Lost Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Arc. The tortured souls of pureed carrots and pees swirled out of the Genie in fumy circles above my head. The demonic smell of rotted, digested baby formula blasted into my nostrils. I felt that Death by Diaper Genie could actually happen. Don't believe me? Just empty out the steaming innards of a Diaper Genie in late August.

As if we didn't have enough shit to deal with already, my husband and I welcomed a little baby girl into our family in 2006. A girl! Yay! She was so sweet, and pure. She coo'd, she smiled. She slept through the night from day one. She was pink, with a flaxen tuft of blond hair on top, and big dreamy cerulean eyes. How, then, in the span of just 2 short years, could this sweet child go from perfectly Pampered and powdered bundle of joy, to shit-eating monster-princess?

It happened like this:

I was busy downstairs helping our then 4 1/2 year old son "wipe till it's white" (husband's term, not mine). As I was explaining that you don't need half a roll of Charmin to clean a Pillsbury biscuit sized ass, I heard a strange woman shrieking and crying from our daughter's upstairs bedroom. It was a horrifying sound that she made --desperate. A howl, really. Almost un-human. I feared the worst, as I flew up the steps on winged feet. Our toddler had suffocated! She had somehow escaped from her crib, shimmied up onto her hamper, undid the child safety window latch, and fallen 2 stories to her demise! No. But close.

There, standing in the middle of our daughter's room, was not a distressed woman. It was my husband, hands on either side of his own face, saying "Why?! Why??! WHYYYY???!!!" He was rooted to the Berber carpeting beneath his feet. He could only point in the direction of our daughter's crib.

There was our beautiful pink bundle of joy, standing in her white crib, eating a Chocodile sized piece of her own excrement. In addition, as if that weren't bad enough, there was shit EVERYWHERE. On the crib. On the fairyland pastel wall mural behind the crib. On the crib dust ruffle. In her hair.

It.

Was.

Everywhere.

My husband isn't as good as I am at putting up with shit like this, but we acted with the swift, thorough efficiency of crime scene investigators.

"Is there more under her nails? Here! Here is a toothbrush. Scrub under her nails!! SCRUB UNDER HER NAILS! Who cares whose toothbrush it is, we'll buy a NEW TOOTHBRUSH!! Did we get it all? Did we miss anything, anywhere? Oh, dear God, WHY?? WHY HAVE YOU FORESAKEN US?"

The clean-up effort took the better part of 2 hours, several trash bags, 2 bottles of Clorox Anywhere Spray, and our innocence. Maybe there are some parents who could fully recover from something like this, but we have never really been the same. In Mike's words "After you've seen your daughter eating her own shit like it's a Fudgesicle, it's hard to ever look at her the same way again." He is right.

The level of filth and depravity involved in parenting is grossly underrepresented in parenting classes, books, and modern childrearing periodicals. Why is there no warning about the spills, stains, and stenches? Why doesn't anyone tell you about the boogers plastered to the undersides of nightstands? The petrified poo pebbles stashed in the corners of bedrooms? The telltale fresh brown skid marks lurking amongst the clean underwear in the drawer? WHY?

I'll tell you why. Because if prospective first-time parents had any inkling - any remote idea - about how truly disgusting it is to raise a child, no one would ever embark on that most odious journey, and we homo sapiens would cease to exist as a species. This  is not for the fainthearted, or the weak of constitution. So think of it not as changing another shitty diaper; nay.  Think of it as saving humankind.

On the flip side, you'll be all the tougher for it in the end. Spoiled milk will no longer make you wretch, you'll simple dump it down the garbage disposal, curds and all, and proceed to hand-wash the sippy cup without a second thought.

You will shrug a little as you make your 5 year old's bed and the sheets are "only a little wet." You will put ketchup on toast, jelly on chicken, and ranch dressing on bananas, just to get your kids to eat something. Anything. Just eat.

But your rewards will be sweet, and will be plentiful. The dearest of these a big warm hug from the freshly scrubbed toddler in the hooded pink bunny towel. She will whisper "I wuv you, mama," as you watch the gray bathwater swirl down the drain.

And that, my friends, is the shit.