Being a parent means sometimes you’ve got to get your hands dirty to keep your kids happy — literally. There are so many gross things that happen behind the scenes of a mom or dad holding their smiling baby that child-free people won’t even realize. Well, it’s time to set the record straight! Here are 15 disgusting and gross things all parents have done at some point.
1. Eat their kid’s leftover food
Kids can be messy eaters, digging their dirty hands into their food and getting it all over the place. However, parents hate food going to waste, so chances are they’ve reached over and finished their child’s leftovers. Sometimes, this helps their kids who don’t want to eat to see that it’s delicious… even though it’s filled with germs.
2. Touch their kids’ dirty hands
Children are learning about their environment, so they’re always touching things — whether it’s dog poo on the ground or dead lizards in the garden. So disgusting. Then, they touch their parents or hold their hand as they’re walking across the road. Now all those germs are on their parents’ hands! In times like these, being a parent can freak you out.
3. Walk around with baby puke on them
This is especially common for moms who are breast-feeding or burping their babies. Sometimes, babies will puke on their mom’s shirt. With so much to do, the mom might walk around with this nasty puke on her clothing without even realizing it or having a chance to clean it up. Ew!
4. Catch baby vomit with their hands
You never know when a baby’s going to blow chunks, so poor parents have probably been in the situation of having to try to catch the vomit with their hands because they didn’t have any other option, like if they were in the car and didn’t want to get the vomit all over the leather interior.
5. Use their fingers to get ear wax out of their baby’s ears
Ear wax can be painful for kids, especially if it becomes compacted. To deal with this, parents might have had to dig their fingers into their baby’s ears to get rid of it. Gross but true!
6. Sniff their baby’s diapers
Is it poo or not? All parents have had to pick up their babies and sniff their diapered butts to see if it was time for a diaper change. For your information, baby poop tends to smell like sour milk. You’re welcome!
7. Remove lice from their children’s hair
Most kids get lice at some point if they’re in school with loads of other kids, and it’s up to their parents to use a fine-toothed comb to fish them out by hand. Lice are especially gross because their bites can lead to itchy, infected scalps.
8. Retrieve a lost toy from the toilet bowl
Imagine this scenario: a mom or dad has just urinated in the toilet, only for their kid to run into the bathroom and toss their toy in the bowl. The parent has no choice but to fish out the toy with their hands. If this happened in their home toilet, that’s bad enough, but imagine this scenario playing out in a public bathroom!
9. Let their kids wipe their dirty hands on them
Kids sometimes freak out when they’re out in public and get something nasty on their hands. Who do they turn to? Mom or dad, of course. Parents sometimes have no choice but to let their kids use their sleeves as a towel.
10. Try to get a foreign object out their baby’s nose
Kids love sticking objects up their noses (or other unsavory places!), whether it’s small candy or pieces of a toy. This results in parents having to fish them out with their fingers. Ugh.
11. Pop a dirty pacifier into their mouths to clean them
Wait, what? If their baby dropped a dirty pacifier onto the floor, they’d quickly stick it into their own mouths to clean it. Imagine the germs on that thing! Although, on the bright side, research has found that using one’s saliva to clean a pacifier can prevent allergies in kids. Who knew?
12. Use their own spit to clean a baby’s dirty face
When a kid gets chocolate or pasta sauce on their cheek, their parent simply puts saliva on their finger and wipes it off. So gross! There’s no good research backing this up to make it less disgusting.
13. Dig through their baby’s poop
There are many reasons why a parent would have to search through their child’s poop, although no one talks about it. Maybe they want to ensure that it’s healthy, or they want to see if their kid’s finally pooped that coin or bead they swallowed days ago.
14. Kiss their babies on the lips.
Kissing babies on the mouth is so gross because kids don’t have as much saliva as adults, which means they don’t have clean mouths. Plus, parents will be adding to the germs in their babies’ mouths by kissing them. Ugh!
15. Take whatever their kids hand them without looking
When kids run into the house and tell their mom or dad to take whatever they’re holding, parents might be surprised to find dirt, earthworms, or who knows what else in their hands. Yuck. But, they oblige their kids to stop them from freaking out. Parenthood isn’t easy!
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