Many of my friends have been blogging for quite sometime and I always thought.....what to write. Then I found myself for last two years dealing with pile of shit both personally and professionally. And hence decided to write blog over "shit"
Most of my friend is aware that I am father of a cute daughter who is going to complete two in coming few weeks. She came to our life in November 2013 and thats when my active engagement with shit happened first.
No way I am going to tell, that before that I was not defecating or was living in such sterile environment that I had no contact with shit....what I mean to highlight that your "Voluntary engagement" starts once you have the kid. When one cleans once own shit...its involuntary as you mostly don't have a choice...do you?
And then in September 2014, I started working on sanitation issues....and that qualified me to engage with shit professionally. And thats how this blog. I intend to chronicle my professional and personal engagements with shit.
And it was black: The very first shit that child does is called Meconium. It is black and Unlike later feces, meconium is composed of materials ingested during the time the infant spends in the uterus: intestinal epithelial cells, lanugo, mucus, amniotic fluid, bile, and water. Meconium, unlike later feces, is viscous and sticky like tar, its color usually being a very dark olive green; it is almost odorless. When diluted in amniotic fluid, it may appear in various shades of green, brown, or yellow. It should be completely passed by the end of the first few days after birth, with the stools progressing toward yellow (digested milk). Please read Wiki in case you want to know more about it.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meconium
And the engagement grows: So, as Wiki said shit progressively turns yellow.....and thats where the story unfolds....till baby was getting her meconium coming out from stomach...there were people around (family) and so you hardly have to worry much. Once the shit turns yellow.....and Baby start having frequent stools....you find yourself amidst pile of shit.
So, thats how I brought my baby to home. It was winter......Old School thought was telling me.....all previous generation was raised on baby wrapped in cotton cloths....or rather any cloths available in the house...so we started with old school and soon realized every one including my baby were having sleepless nights......(Shall be dealing with sleepless nights in another blog later)
Then we figured out....baby was getting wet as my public health training was telling baby needed to be breastfed and if she was getting enough of it....6-7 times urination was indication.....and you could easily imagine long winter nights.....and baby wrapped in cloths.....
And then we got this magic pants...."diaper"
My wife and I put diaper as one of the biggest invention of 20th century possibly and are unison in case voting by us---parents of millions of babies all over world win Nobel prize for someone who has discovered better invented this diaper. (Disclaimer: We don't really know who has invented it and rather lazy to google it at this hour).
But, hey I found this damn costly.....over two years...I realized quite a substantial chunk of produce of my "Professional engagement of shit" was going to cover for my personal engagement of shit. On an average one bout of baby shit costs roughly about INR 15 rupees. (this is inclusive of wet wipes....which is so costly).
And other day I found a friend of mine was complaining about the quality of diapers by pampers. Rightly so, their quality has gone down.
Thats where I stop for the introduction. I intend to deal with my professional engagement in upcoming posts....when I would deal with what I professionally do and explain. In addition, I intend to invite my friends working on sanitation to write on this space.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in blogs are personal and no way represents views of the organizations that I work with or worked with in the past.
