The Seventh Food Group

One of my Mama friends, Mrs O, nearly made me throw up the other day.

Unlike the last time I felt sick, which was as a result of rockin' out at an awesome party being a bit dehydrated, on this occasion it was preempted by a story about her son, Mr Messy, and his latest snack. Being the wonderful friend I am, after gagging then laughing I asked if I could blog it.

Last weekend Mr & Mrs O grabbed the keys to their new house and opened the door to find the place completely filthy. Crap left in cupboards, junk in the yard and bugs everywhere. Delightful stuff.

To her credit, Mrs O went head down, bum up and had the whole place spick and span within a weekend thanks to some hard yakka, a couple of cockroach bombs and using up all her babysitting credits. There is obviously something seriously wrong with her me because I've lived here for years and I still have boxes that I haven't unpacked.

A few days later, after the lovely new-home excitement has worn off a bit and it was back to the usual mundane tasks of mamahood, Mrs O turned around to find Mr Messy chomping happily away on something... something brown, with six legs and wings... a gigantic cockroach. Gag.

Image Credit: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

After doing the whole 'my child is eating something icky' dance, complete with arm waving, she remembered the cockroach bombs. So not only was Mr Messy eating a brown bomber, he was eating a bombed brown bomber.

PANIC STATIONS! A poison cockroach!!!

Mrs O kept her cool and rang the Poisons Information Centre - should she give him milk? water? induce vomiting? Apparently the amount of poison he would have ingested was minimal and that it's not really harmful to humans anyway. Phew. They did tell her to give him a drink to make sure he washed it all down and there wasn't any left in his mouth to choke on... which induced her own vomiting (and my own).

So I put the call out on Twitter, asking people to name the grossest thing their child had ever eaten, half because I wanted to reassure her she wasn’t the only one and half because I wanted to know just how much I have to prepare myself for as a Mama... after hearing some of the results I'm thinking I will have to either be really vigilant or develop and iron stomach.

Some of my favourites were:

@MotherMoments Whose son was such a fan of kitty litter they had to rig up a system on the laundry door so the cats could get in but he couldn't;

@Our_Adventures, @TutuAmes and @CollinsWeribee Whose children all ate dog poo (some more than once!);

@MeganBlandford and @katesaysstuff whose kids both ate worms, then remembered their table manners and ate dirt with a spoon;

@Hey_Bambini whose child ate an old piece of toast crust with a mysterious green substance on it (was quite likely to be mould but will be referred to as "avocado") that they found in a basket of toys in a café;

And Mrs O – you’re not alone:

@MrsGMach’s son ate a cockroach and after she fished it out of his mouth and threw it away, he went and got it back out of the bin & kept munching!

@MummyMcTavish ate an entire cockroach when she was little even though her Mum found her part way through – she left her eating it so she could get a tissue, not wanting to touch it!

So what is the grossest thing you or your child has even eaten?

For a poisons emergency call the Poisons Information Centre on 13 11 26

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Glowless rocked the Aussie Bloggers Conference thanks to

HealthyChart and Baby Goes Retro and Simply Colors