Thursday, 2nd March 2006.

Food, glorious food

Have you ever seen a regurgitated combination of pasta sauce and Greek natural yoghurt?

Well, we have. It looks not unlike a raspberry Muller corner, but it smells foul. Lauree's response when I divulged this information to the team this afternoon was that baby sick is one of the worst odours in the world - I can assure her that there are far worse, generally associated with the other end of the body. But baby vomit does have one particularly nasty drawback: it clings. You can wash off disposable smells with a good deal of soap and maybe a couple of rinses, but you can't get the odour of regurgitated puke out of your skin without showering for at least fifteen minutes - and if it gets on your clothes, it's time for the hazmat suit.

It was my own fault for swinging him. I have a standard holding position: one arm clasped across his chest, supporting him and hugging him to my front. This is fine except that it puts a little pressure on his stomach, which is not normally a problem unless he's recently eaten - which essentially explains the situation that occurred this afternoon. And when I move him about or shift my arm's position slightly, the effect is like a poor replication of the Heimlich manoeuvre, which is enough to bring up the contents of the previously digested meal - over me, over the carpet, the cushions, in between the wooden studs on the chair leg, on the magazine which was thankfully about to be thrown out, and all over Mummy.

How do I account for such a wide coverage? Probably because my reaction as he started to vomit was to move him so that he could puke in a spot that he hadn't managed to reach yet, producing a fine spray that somehow managed to go everywhere. All this happened in a second or two, and I didn't really have time to think about what I was doing, so I could be forgiven for this. The net result was that he looked a bit like a sprinkler.

Emily sighed, and ran to get a muslin. (Note for anyone who's about to become a parent: you can never, and I really cannot stress this highly enough, never have too many muslin squares. Even with the washing machine on 24/7 and with your house supply of Kleenex undergoing constant replenishment, you'll never run out of things that need mopping up after they've been spilt from one place or another. We have a large collection of clean muslins in the bathroom, except that we label them Muslims because it's easier to say. My brother-in-law, who recently became a first-time father himself, has suggested that the ones that wipe up excrement should be referred to as Shiite Muslims.)

Kay tells me that as we get bigger our stomachs bend internally - but that an infant's stomach is still quite straight, and that's why babies vomit easier. I thanked her for this information and said that I'd bear it in mind in the future, but I have a sneaky suspicion that I won't be doing that. The simple truth is that I seem to have an inability to learn from my mistakes where this particular area of parenthood is concerned: no matter how many times Em reminds me about not holding him by his stomach when there's food digesting, I always seem to wind up ignoring her, purely out of simple forgetfulness. Joshua, for his part, doesn't seem to give a hoot. He can see that Mummy and Daddy are flustered and it makes him laugh. Glad to be of service, kid.

I think I might be taking a shower when I get home tonight, but there was zero opportunity earlier given that the whole episode happened about five minutes before I needed to return to the office after lunch, so it's something to look forward to later. In the meantime, I'm back at my desk while Em is taking Josh round Tesco, and realise that I have only myself to blame for my less-than-charismatic appearance. The stains are invisible from a distance, but I'm aware of the lingering smell, and I could have sworn that a few minutes ago I heard someone singing 'Don't Stand So Close To Me'.