Belly-button ballyhoo

Baby E's umbilical cord stump has fallen off.

How do I know?

Because our dog, Bodhi, ate it.

I'm squeamish. I'll admit it. There are certain things I just don't and won't do because they totally gross me out, and recently added to the list was umbilical stump care on the baby. That task was relegated to A., which he didn't seem to mind too much. He's pretty unflappable (he did, after all, investigate my taint region in a completely nonsexual way this week). But that damned umbilical stump is/was freaking disgusting. I wanted nothing, NOTHING I tell you, to do with it.

So I was holding the baby while sitting on the couch and she nodded off, as babies tend to do. I stood up to go put her in her bassinet when I heard a small *thud* on the hardwood floor. **NOTE: This is another situation where my world suddenly goes into slow motion. For effect, imagine the following turn of events in slow motion.** I looked down and there it was. It took a second to click in my head what I was looking at, but suddenly the lights came on in the recollective part of my brain and I realized what it was: the stump.

Before I had a chance to register what it was and, in turn, DO something about it (ie, picking it up), Bodhi came from out of nowhere and snatched it away. The dog is the worst scavenger I've ever seen. The second something drops on the floor, no matter where you are in the house and no matter where he is when you drop it, it WILL go in his mouth. I can't even tell you how many prenatal vitamins he's snatched away.

Bodhi ran away with his new treasure to places dark and unaccessible to anyone bigger than six pounds. In that time, I put down the baby, hollered at A that Bodhi had taken her umbilical stump (oh yeah, by the way, dear, her stump fell off) and what ensued was nothing short of a scene from Benny Hill. We are both chasing this tiny little dog around our house, yelling at him, yelling at each other, hunched over, crawling under tables and chairs, trying to get to this dog before he consumes our baby's umbilical stump. I don't know what we would have done with it had we salvaged it... I know some people save them, but that's really frikkin' gross. I don't know but I DO know I didn't want my dog eating it.

Well... you can't always get what you want.

I finally got to Bodhi and in the split second of me trying to pick him up, I saw it in his mouth, then heard his little dog swallow. It was gone. The dog had just eaten the baby's umbilical stump.
I guess there's really no harm in it. I mean, it's like a scab, right? It's not like he'll die or anything. Maybe it's rich in protein... though I doubt the dog has any vitamin deficiency right now after, as I mentioned, all the prenatal vitamins I've dropped and he's snatched away. Shit, I'm pretty sure he'll live to like, 30 at this rate, as chocked full as he is with vitamins and minerals and stuff.

And you can believe I'm not going to be searching CSI-style through his poop to find it.

(Thankfully, though, Baby E didn't seem to mind too much through all these shenanigans:)