At any given time, it housed movie stubs seven months old, ancient sticks of gum that had fallen out of the pack and been forgotten so long they'd crystallized, and gobs and gobs of receipts from the grocery store, Old Navy, and that one time I had to pay to extract my dogs from the pound.
If you wanted to lose it for, say, a good year and half, you could hedge your bets and put it in my purse.
While an embarrassment on many levels, that sucker held, literally, everything.
But, now that I've had a baby, I've had to get rid of my purse-trashing ways.
Mostly because I no longer carry a purse.
Now, I am out and proud about my love of my obnoxiously bright and patterned Vera Bradley diaper bag, and I make no apologies for it.
I also don't make as big of a mess of it as I used to back in my purse-toting days.
Mostly because I cloth diaper, I can't allow it to get that out of hand. Every other day or so, I dig around for my wet bag filled with that morning's dirty diaper Ella produced while we were out on the go, and when your hands are, for lack of a better analogy, already elbow-deep in the cookie jar, you might as have a cookie, er, clean your diaper bag.
Let's just all pause for a moment and pretend that horrible metaphor worked. OK. Moving on...
Anyway, I'd say I manage to tidy up my diaper bag several times a week and do a thorough emptying and re-organizing two or three times a month. I probably wash the bag itself every five to six weeks, depending on when it needs it.
After all, this isn't some vessel I can just stuff half-eaten snacks in. This bag houses my baby's clean clothes and diapers and toys. I have to keep it semi-respectable.
Not that I don't still stuff in receipts, spare change, and anything else that falls into my hand that doesn't have an immediate place in my car or on my person.
But I'm better.
Or I thought I was.
Because last week, when I was going through one of those bi-monthly, "Dump the whole thing out; sort through it all, and re-stock the bag in an organized fashion with whatever you need," moments, I found something hard and, for lack of a better term, fossilized, in one of the inner, deep pockets of the diaper bag.
I felt the item with my hand and wondered, seriously, what it could be.
Just like all Vera Bradley bags, my diaper bag has approximately 2,496 pockets, so it's not surprising to find a missing earring or the cap to my favorite water bottle - both of which have been missing a month or two - tucked into a random pocket I didn't know the bag had.
But as my hand brought forth the random, gnarled object, I couldn't for the life of me guess what the mystery item might be.
And, when it finally emerged from the bag and my opened palm, at first glance, I was even more puzzled.
Then, it hit me.
I dropped the little piece of what felt like rock-hard wax and yelped, "Oh my gosh! It's Ella's umbilical cord!"
And laying there, where I'd unceremoniously dropped it, was the little blackened stump, clamped with a piece of rubber cord, that had fallen off Ella's belly almost a year ago.
"What on God's green Earth was that thing still doing in your diaper bag?" my husband yelled, clearly disgusted.
"I don't know!" I screeched. "I've washed my diaper bag, like, 10 times. How'd it make it through that?"
"That's sick," the hubs re-iterated.
And I just sat there grimacing as it all came back to me...
***
Ella was one week old.
My mother had just left to go back to Florida, and my husband had just headed back to work.
Ella and I were alone for the day, for the first time, on our own.
She had a weight-check appointment that afternoon at her then-pediatrician. I was a nervous wreck about getting her clean, dressed, and out of the house, with myself clean and dressed, as well, all so we could make it to the doctor's office on time.
When the doctor walked in and gently took her from my hands, I remember breathing a sigh of relief, silently congratulating myself that I'd actually done it, and collapsing into the requisite "mom chair" in the examination room.
Then, the doctor had turned to me and said, "Mom, look! Did you see what just happened?"
And there, sitting atop Ella's 1 week old belly, was her umbilical cord, unattached.
"Oh...." I said, realizing I wasn't acting excited, much to the pediatrician's dismay.
So, I then faked a good, "Wow! It finally happened!" for her benefit, but the doctor still didn't seem pleased.
So then, I did it. Due to peer pressure, I did the very act that had me recoiling in horror 11 months later.
"Well, I'll save it! I'll take it home so I can show her father when he gets home from work!" I positively yelled.
Then, I added a "Oh boy! This is so exciting!" for good measure.
The doctor finally seemed pleased and moved on with the exam.
And me? Well, thanks to my new-mom craziness and severe sleep deprivation, I obviously never thought about it again.
***
Honestly, it wasn't that gross. It's just a piece of old, dried-up skin.
Blech.
But never fear, it soon found it's way to the trash can - the place it should have wound up 11 months ago.
Frankly, I'm not sure how it managed to survive multiple trips through the washing machine and the constant beating that bag - and all its contents - take every day.
Darn Vera and all her handy-dandy hidden pockets.
Yuck yuck yuck.
Or is it really that yucky?
I was telling a friend of mine this story, and she openly admitted that she saved both her son's umbilical stumps. They reside in little plastic pouches in their baby books.
Whoa.
Then another girl we know chimed in that she did the same thing with her daughter's. She said it was akin to her saving her baby's first lock of hair.
Which I guess I can kind of get behind.
Sort of.
To each their own, obviously. But I just don't think I'm going to be storing my kids dried cords in their memory boxes any time soon.
Their diaper bag? Sure.
But definitely not the memory boxes.
***
So, tell me, did you save your baby's umbilical cord stump?
Happy Tuesday, everyone.
