CS was not able to accompany me to Children’s Hospital to get Sun’s EEG. No matter. She and I arrive and are called in no time. First, the nurse cleans Sun’s head with gritty soap. She comments that Sun didn’t cry for that part and how odd that was: “What a good baby girl,” she exclaimed. Then the nurse explains that to keep from sedating Sun, she’d like Sun to be groggy and recommends that I nurse her. So the nurse leaves us alone and dims the lights. I nurse Sun. She stays awake. It didn’t help that I’d already given her her morning nap not knowing they’d want her sleepy. So I give her a bottle. She drinks it all. Still awake.

After about 20 minutes, the nurse decides to start with Sun awake. Oh, boy. We lay Sun on the gurney and then the nurse proceeds to put 21 (!) electrodes around Sun’s head. Yeah, that’s a lot. Gratefully, Sun didn’t cry or try to pull on any of them. Each one had goop on it and then a strip of paper over the electrode. Pretty. Then, once all 21 were in place, she wrapped Sun’s head in gauze, even under her chin. She looked like a soap opera patient. This wasn’t making Sun happy but she handled it pretty well.

Then the nurse said, “It’s almost over. We only monitor for 20 minutes.” She said that like it’d zip on by. I thought, “Dear God, it’s going to be a long 20 minutes.” And it was. Mainly because at about the 10 minute mark, Sun’s stomach groaned and then so did her butt. Then Sun started to cry. Greaaaat.

The nurse tells me it’s okay for me to change her diaper. So I put her back on the gurney and get the wipes and a fresh diaper. I grab her pants to pull them down and see the telling brown stain. “Oh, no, she leaked. . . a lot. . . dammit. It’s all over her. Ah, man. Is it on me, too? . . . Not that her discomfort isn’t primary to mine. . . .” Yeah, I said all of that as if the nurse cared. There was poop everywhere, people. It had soaked through her diaper, her onesie and her pants and was all over that gurney.

And I couldn’t change her clothes yet because I couldn’t get her onesie off without pulling out the electrodes. So we waited. Ten long, smelly minutes. Sun lay on the gurney bottomless–it was too messy to even put the fresh diaper on while her soiled onesie was still on.

Finally, we were done with the procedure and her electrodes came off. The nurse wiped her head down but left her with clumps of gel throughout her head. Not pretty.

I wiped Sun down. She had poop from her neck down. The nurse even commented that it was an awful lot of poop–she felt bad that she’d insisted I keep feeding her to get her asleep. After a lot of wiping, I got Sun clean and dressed and we were off. See all the fun Daddy missed?

The nurse told me that they’ll send the results to the pediatrician next week. I just hope (1) Sun didn’t move too much such that we need to do this again with her sedated and (2) that they don’t find something and want her to have an MRI. Cleaning the inside of that machine of her poop will take me forever.