My baby just put a dead shrew in her mouth

[BaylisAndHardon]

Posting in AIBU for traffic, and to ask for a hand hold while I get over this horror.

We live in an old victorian house (with many mouse holes) in the country and have a cat to manage the rodent populus, but he also sometimes brings things in . I always check the floor of the snug for anything and disinfect/scrub if he has before putting her down to play.

But this time he put it under a toy in her play pen and I didn't see it and she picked it up and put it in her mouth before I could lauch myself at her to get it out. I am horrified.

Messages of support please. Also accounts of children who have survived to adulthood after putting disgusting things in their mouths. Tell me your worst. I need to hear it.

My son ate a cigarette butt found on the floor of a pub garden. He's fine

All good for their microbiome! Relax 🙏🤣

My son eats the dog biscuits

Absolutely loving this thread. Thank you everyone. Laughing a lot

Child fine. Have kept her away from the cat's bum though. Top tip 😂

One of mine was outside with me pottering as an 18 month old or so, I looked down to see my son with a bald, dead baby bird in his hand and blood all around his mouth. At least it was the birds‘ blood, but my son had popped the little corpse into his mouth to investigate what it was and the body wasn’t entirely intact afterwards. Nightmares after that one.

Many, many years ago, as a first-time mother with NO experience of children (I never even babysat), I went a bit overboard with cleaning and sterilizing. I kept it up until I found my then-8-month-old sitting on the floor (on his blankie), calmly eating a cockroach. Now, do bear in mind that we lived in Florida, and EVERYONE had cockroaches. Clean house=clean roach, dirty house=dirty roach, but EVERYONE had them. He survived, and I give him credit for spitting out the drumsticks, which would have tickled going down. He is now 40 years old, 6 feet 10 inches tall, and healthy as a horse.

Although I've never quite gotten over it, I did quit sterilizing everything that came within 10 feet of him!

Scary stories.

just don't swallow slugs. I've heard a horror story about a young man suffering terrible consequences after eating a slug: he got brain damaged and died.

That is EATING one and it might have been in eg Australia where the creatures are often more dangerous than in the UK>

My son aged about 2 somehow got flour all over himself and I was worried he'd breathed loads in, but he seemed fine afterwards.

This is not a good thread to read when recovering from gastroenteritis.
All I can think of at the moment is mud, Daisy's, buttercups, sand, a crayon.
Not a particularly exciting list. Maybe ds will add to it and horrify me.

I fished a whole, live snail out of my 1 year old’s mouth in the garden recently. Which made a change from him treating the bark chippings like a big bowl of crisps. We also have to watch him like a hawk on the beach (we live on the coast) as he will eat huge fistfuls of sand.

My sister and I used to have tea parties in the garden, mixing mud and water and drinking it. I once ate a whole packet of aspirin, which I had climbed up the kitchen cabinet to reach. I still like the taste of them.

@MerlotChiantiMontepulicano

My DS used to lick his pram wheels.

I'm sure she'll be fine OP.

Haha my son does this!! He also likes to put his hand down the toilet and lick them. Luckily this is rare but every so often someone forgets to shut a door and he's in the bathroom before you can get hold of him!

My youngest used to lick the floor and taste all stones and eat sand in the sand pit and eat chalk... blue nappies anyone. He never gets colds.

My son ate his own shit when he was around 18 months old - managed to remove his own nappy while in his cot at some point in the night. The cot, walls and he were plastered in it and I have to assume his shitty fingers went in his mouth. Medical advice was 'he might have a bit of D&V after but should be fine'. He was and no D&V. He's 18 now. It was probably good for his immune system because he seems to have a cast iron stomach

My daughter took a snail out of the drain and put it in her mouth! Hardly ever ill to this day

Hilarious.

I feel certain your baby will be fine and that this will be a story you recount on her wedding day.

Probably good for her immune system or something.

@Wilkie1956mog

All this is revolting and very funny! (The winner is "licking the cat's bum." I'm sure baby will be absolutely fine. Don't worry.

Yep, hideous and hilarious in equal measure.

The cat's bum is my favourite, too. Partly because I'm impressed that the cat was chilled enough to tolerate having its ringpiece licked by a toddler. Any cat I've ever lived with would have resisted that in the strongest possible terms, and with claws.

Do any of the shit-eating children have any recollection of what it tastes like? I'm kind of curious, in a ghoulish sort of way.

I'd like to know, but refuse to try it for myself.

My uncle put chicken shit in my mum’s mouth when they were kids,told her to close her eyes and it was chocolate. She died aged 93.

DS2 is 9 now and the strongest child I know in terms of coughs/colds. When he was little we were digging the garden and I called him over, thinking I'd show him a huge spider I'd found. He tootled over, smiled and as he got nearer I realised he had an entire pigeon leg including the actual foot happily perched inside. (We have cats who adore fucking up the local pigeon population).

I was terrified he'd have some kind of pigeon disease so phoned our GP, who howled laughing and still calls him "the pigeon boy" when we visit.

@FloreanFortescue

My son eats the dog biscuits

My aunt was horrified by my mother's laid back approach to me eating Winalot, not helped by my mother's response that she was hoping it would give me strong teeth and a glossy coat.

Years later, I had a boyfriend who ran a big window cleaning company. Their contracts included a pet food factory and several top-end London hotels. He told me that the hygiene and cleanliness standards of the pet food factory were far, far better than any of hotels, and he'd rather eat dog food from the factory than a meal prepared in any of the hotel kitchens.

to be fair to the cat - it probably wasnt quite dead and crawled under the toy to hide and died there (as a kid my cats always brought 'gifts' home including one mouse that survived - got into my sock draw, snacked on a box of tampons and died!)

My daughter was a grim toddler for putting things in her mouth - worms, slugs, kissing snails, eating mud... she's just fine.

I used to eat wood lice, just a bit of extra protein 😉

I ate Winalot, whilst sitting in my Godmother's dog basket. 62 now and still have my teeth and shiny hair... so there might be something to it!

Why are toddlers so disgusting

When my almost 3 year old finally had a poop in his potty (managed wees for a good year but never pooped!) I was so busy congratulating him I didn’t see my lightning fast 10 month old daughter stick her hand in the potty, squidge the contents and lick her fingers. I turned around and she had brown smudges around her mouth and a very dirty fist 😬 I went from total elation to feeling like the worlds worst, most disgusting parent alive in the space of about 3 seconds. Still makes me heave 12 years later. 🤢

My Dgd put a filter sponge from the fish tank in her mouth,covered in fish shit. She retrieved it from the bin. She was a year old at the time. 13 years later she's fit and well!