Why I'm an Expert at Getting Bad Smells Out of Carpet

Sorry for the slight break in posts. It's been one of those weeks.

*** Warning Mommy Graphicness in this Post ***

So I had thought my son was beginning to outgrow his acid reflux. He'd gone from medication morning and night to just at night, and recently his nightly dose was decreased by half. Then Sunday happened.

For those of you who don't know acid reflux has a number of different symptoms. For Everett this manifested as throwing up. A LOT. Sometimes as many as four times in 24 hours. Most of the time he'd throw up two times one right after the other.

The worst of this was when he was almost 9 months old. In a matter of three weeks about 15 of the 21 days he threw up. I was SO done. I remember talking to my pediatrician—so stressed about it, only to be told I had to wait for him to grow out of it as he was already on as much medication as his weight allowed. I had to deal with this on my own most of the time as my husband Tim was usually at work.

When Everett threw up it wasn't just a small puddle on the floor. It spurted out of him, covering him and me, making a splat mark the size of two placemats on the floor. A couple of times when Everett threw up I was so overwhelmed I'd burst into tears. (Not to mention how difficult it is to clean up myself and Everett when all he wanted to do was play in the throw up ) The worst was when Everett was facing me or cuddling into me and then started throwing up. More often than not this would result in everything disgusting going all over and down my shirt. I will spare you any other gross details.

Suffice it to say I was getting extremely sick of the smell in my house. I tried everything I could think of to get the smell out. Nothing worked. After a number of internet searches I came across a site with the answer.

This last Sunday Everett threw up twice in his crib after a solid month and a half of not throwing up at all. The positive in this being that he didn't throw up on Tim or I. That and I was able to get the smell out of the carpet.

The answer? Scrub your carpet with whatever cleaning products you prefer until the throw up (or similar gross smelling stuff) is cleaned out of it. Use a spray bottle filled with water and spray the entire area where the throw up was.  Keep spraying until your carpet/couch/etc is soaked. After this generously dump baking soda over the wet carpet. Leave the area until the water has completely evaporated. Lastly vacuum up the baking soda. Voila! Bad smells gone. Yay.

I'm learning to deal with Everett's throwing up, but when your kid is throwing up it's definitely a huge downer. Though now that you know how to get the smell out of your carpets it's got to be a little bit easier to handle now doesn't it?

Cheers!