Once upon a time, we took our big summer trips to Rome or London or Paris. That was before we had a small, wriggly person to tote along, and also before that person had grandparents who were dying to see her, so this year we went to Canada, where my husband is from. Despite the fact that it was travel with a baby, it seemed like it might have some tinge of glamour: we flew in and out of Montreal and spent a few days there, staying at a lovely downtown hotel. We were there during the jazz festival, I had a long list of excellent-sounding restaurants and food shops I wanted to visit, and my husband was eager to revisit his college haunts.

On the other hand, the time in Montreal was not exactly the carefree stay one might have hoped. We had a suite, so that Nora could sleep while we were in the other room—but it turned out to be an open suite, so we spent quite a bit of time being very, very quiet in a darkened living room while she napped. And then she got sick, with a fever and other symptoms, so there was some time spent making international calls to our pediatrician to see if we should try to come home early to have her looked at. (In the event, it would have cost us $1200 to change just my husband's airline ticket, and mine couldn't be changed at all. When we heard that, we suddenly realized that Montreal, too, has pediatricians and decided to stay put.) Given how sick and tired she was, we didn't want to take her out to any restaurants, so we took turns scurrying out for takeout to bring back to our hotel. But that was not the truly unglamorous part of our trip. For that, we'd have to go back to its beginnings.

Our Montreal sojourn, I should say, was at the tail end of our trip. We'd spent ten lovely days at my in-laws' cottage ("cottage" is Canadian for what I would call a "cabin," though their second home, which is on a lake in Quebec, is really not a cabin at all), where I swam every day and marveled at the lushly green Canadian summer. The last time I was there it was icy cold and we could walk on the lake, and I still can't really wrap my head around its ability to warm up to a swimmable temperature. Being from California, I'm used to lakes, like Tahoe, that remain frigid year-round. We celebrated Nora's first birthday, which coincides with Canada Day, and played with her cousin (three months older than she is) and let her grandparents indulge her.

None of that, however, is what we will most remember from the trip. Her first birthday looms large, of course, but even larger looms what has come to be referred to darkly as The Incident: a parental trial-by-fire the likes of which we had never known. When we told friends about it, we got responses like, "Well, you're really parents now." It happened on the first day of our trip, and it put all notions of carefree, glamorous travel out of our heads. I warn non-parents and the squeamish that you may not want to read further.

As I mentioned, we flew into Montreal, and the day after we arrived we had made plans to drive down to Vermont to see an old college friend of mine. He, his wife, and their new baby were in Vermont for a wedding, and we never see them, so we decided to make the trip to introduce Nora, meet their son, and catch up. It seemed straightforward: two hours or so south to Burlington, a nice brunch, and then we'd turn back and head up to my husband's parents' place. No problem.

Until, that is, we ran into a road closure and an impenetrable detour through rural Quebec on our way to the border. We drove in circles, literally, for about an hour, losing the cushion of extra time we'd allotted and then some. Thus, by the time we were approaching Burlington we were twenty minutes late and my husband was driving the rental car like a bat out of hell. That's when we started to smell something.

"Is that cows?" I asked hopefully.

"Maybe. But I think it's the baby," he replied. I should say that Nora had not, to put it delicately (though delicacy will not be, cannot be, maintained in this story: you'll see), had a dirty diaper the preceding day. We knew that we were heading for a major diaper incident, in any case, and it seemed to have arrived. But there wasn't a gas station for miles.

"We should just get to Burlington and then we'll change her," I said. "There's no place to stop here anyway."

My husband kept driving. The smell kept growing, along with our concern.

"Do you think…uh…the diaper might have leaked?" my husband asked.

"It seems like it might," I said. "But I can't see her." Her carseat was installed rear-facing, on the passenger side, so I had no view. I reached back and twisted around to feel along the diaper line. Nora was wearing an adorable little sundress, complete with tiny cotton bloomers. I felt her leg. Indeed, there was something disgusting next to the diaper.

"I'm afraid so," I said. "What should we do?"

"We'll pull over as soon as we get to town and clean her up," my husband said. "We're just a couple of miles away, right?"

I consulted the much-used map. "Yeah, looks like it. Watch for the exit."

We got into town and pulled over a few blocks from the restaurant where we were meeting our friends. We were already late, but we hoped (since they had a three-month-old) that they might be late as well. I got out of the car and went around to inspect the damage. One look at my daughter, and I was all but speechless with shock.

She was, and I am not kidding or using the phrase metaphorically, covered in shit from head to toe. She had smeared it on her face, in her hair, between her toes, in her (sorry about this) mouth, everywhere. It was drying and flaking.

"Oh. My. God," I said.

My husband later said that he thought I was exaggerating, for a brief moment. Then he got a look at her.

"Oh, shit," he said. We looked at each other in horror, got a wipe out of the diaper bag, and flailed uselessly at one soiled leg. It had no effect whatsoever. My husband—who, I might add, was clad in a white linen shirt—started to take her out of her carseat.

"Wait!" I said. "Put her back! We need a plan!"

There was a panicked pause. I looked wildly around the lovely, quaint New England town we'd just arrived in. Behind us was a gas station.

"Okay, here's what we're going to do. I run to the restaurant and give some explanation for why we're going to be even later. You take her to the gas station and start washing. We need running water. Beg them. Pay them if you have to. I'll meet you there."

I wanted to add, "Go! Go! Go!" like a military officer sending troops into battle, but given that I had just grabbed the good job (on the grounds that I knew where the restaurant was and knew my friend better), I felt I shouldn't. My husband heroically set off, to the utter ruination of the white shirt. I arrived at the restaurant to find that my friends weren't actually there yet, so I left a message with the hostess and ran back. From inside the gas station bathroom were emanating howls of protest. Nora was seated in the sink, still a mess but exponentially better than before thanks to my husband's ministrations. The floor was a slick of befouled water. I bought two rolls of paper towels and a bottle of Fantastik (the only cleanser the gas station had; it was clear we would have to clean their bathroom when we finished), and grabbed the diaper bag, with its precious cargo of hand sanitizer. I tried not to think about the havoc we had just wrought on the rental car and carseat.

The cleanup job took a full forty minutes, including the time to clean the bathroom. The cute sundress was a complete loss. (Ah, vanity! If I had only dressed her in overalls, the whole episode would probably just have been your average diaper blowout—not fun, but nothing like trying to get drying shit off your baby's previously pristinely innocent face.) We used half the bottle of hand sanitizer, slathering it over Nora and ourselves, and then put Nora—dressed in fresh clothes, as was my husband—in the mercifully clean stroller. The car, which smelled about as appalling as you would imagine, we locked and left at the gas station, and we walked to meet our friends, in a state of shock. Neither one of us really wanted to look at Nora.

We soft-pedaled the explanation of exactly what had happened when we excused our lateness to our friends, but I fear we were not at our best. After a somewhat subdued brunch (during which we took care not to touch our friends' tiny, unsullied newborn), we were faced with the unfortunate task of cleaning the carseat. It required a further roll of paper towels and half the contents of a bottle of some earth-friendly upholstery cleaner, the only thing we could find at the natural-foods store in town. But we got that thing clean.

We drove out of town feeling that we'd been through the wringer, but the day was not over. We were no further than 10 miles on when we were pulled over; my husband was speeding, but just out of habit, not because we were in a particular hurry. We didn't have registration (thanks to the rental car) or proof of insurance (thanks to our own forgetfulness). Nevertheless, the cop let us go with a friendly wave and a "Have a safe trip." As we drove away at exactly 65 miles per hour, all we could think was that it was lucky we hadn't gotten pulled over on the way into town, when unbeknownst to us our cargo included an excrement-covered baby. If we had, she would probably be living with a nice family in Vermont by now.

We continued back to Canada, sobered by the realities of traveling as parents. We went on another couple of trips over the summer, all with their highs and lows: a trip to Vancouver, for instance, included a car breakdown on the way to the airport, two six-hour traffic jams, lost luggage, and several other vicissitudes. Maybe the lesson is that we shouldn't go to Canada, but I think it's just that traveling with a kid is a little more unpredictable than we thought. I think it'll be a while before we get back to Rome.