May the Lord strike me down

Let me just preface this entry with the fact that I deserve to rot in hell for the thoughts I’ve had this afternoon.  (I do hope you’ll overlook all of the offensive invocations of God in this blog entry.) My neighbor, a fellow mom watching her child full time (I’m looking for phrases to replace “stay-at-home-mom”), invited me over to her house for a play-date on a snowy Tuesday morning.  There were four other moms and their toddlers ranging in ages from 15 months to about 24 months.  Needless to say, the house was a little nutty.

First of all, said lovely neighbor’s kid (she really is nice and may the lord strike me down for writing all of this) had a productive, hacking cough.  Awesome.  The hostess was nice enough to put out all kinds of kid-friendly snacks for the toddlers and moms.  One such snack was a bowl of popcorn into which the hands of the hacking toddler went, repeatedly.  My favorite part of the snacking experience was when hacking toddler felt she wanted to eat her popcorn with a spoon.  Spoon to mouth, spoon to community bowl.  Spoon to mouth, spoon to community bowl.  Delicious.  Suffice it to say that I did not indulge in the offerings, and thank goodness Z is still too little.

The real kicker was the discussion of sleep.  At least 3 of the 5 moms had regular night-wakers.  I’d like to remind you that these babies were AT LEAST 8 months older than our little guy.  I don’t even think I can put into words the horror I felt at the prospect of losing out on sleep for yet another year!  One of the moms with a 20 month old said she literally hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in 3 years.  With her pregnancy she was up in the night throwing up, and then everyone knows what the first 6 months are like, but her first six months extended into the first two years.  Call me smug, but I HAVE to believe that there is something these parents are either doing or not doing with regard to sleep to be living in such misery.  Again, God strike me down now.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned so far about parenting it is, “judge ye not” until you walk a mile in so-and-so’s shoes.  And yet here I am, doing it.

I’m not at all saying that these mamas deserve the sleeplessness that they’re getting, but I’m saying that there are methodologies out there to help your child sleep that actually work, right???  Please tell me I’m right about this.  Another one of the moms told me that they’d tried sleep training 5 times with their LO but to no avail.  Define tried.  Seriously, I am terrified.  I know that there are many, many worse possible scenarios with regard to babies, but sleeping affects quality of life so directly.  Affects, effects- it does both!

Clearly, I’ve worked myself into a proper tizzy, and I’ve made these Mom’s respective sleep problems all about me.

I forgot to mention that we’ve been SO lucky of late with sleep and Z.  (I know I’m jinxing it right now.)  After hitting the wall, I scoured the internet, read several books, and we found a method that resonated with me and D.  And so, we did some difficult but so far (knock on wood) well worth-it sleep training, and Z has been sleeping through the night.  After experiencing life with adequate amounts of sleep for the last 2 weeks (woohoo!) I cannot imagine going back.  Sure, I understand that Z will have some needs in the middle of the night as he moves through his childhood.  Awesome- that’s what I signed up for.  But, and I do have a big butt (that one never gets old and it’s so true!), endless exhaustion just makes life feel really difficult.

So, to turn it back around, I am wishing the moms and dads who have lost 3+ years worth of sleep some respite in the very near future.   And I am *praying* (invoking G again here, sorry) that D and I do not find ourselves in that boat a few years down the road.  I am also recognizing that there are worse boats.

Ain't nothin' wrong with a little poop. But a lot of poop might mean somethin' is wrong...

Nothing like a little norovirus or rotovirus, or whatever the hell it was, to get those last pesky little prego- pounds gone. 

I’ll spare you the gory details, but the hubbers and I have decided that our LO is either super tough, or he didn’t get hit as hard with this nasty stomach flu as we did.  He was sick on Sunday.  Of course we knew something was awry as he doesn’t usually upchuck entire bottles worth of food, but he didn’t seem to be in terrible spirits.  When the second bottle of the day came pouring out of all orifices, nose included (I had to give you some gory details), we called Z’s doc. to see if we needed to take any special precautions.

Wait, who am I kidding?  I called the doc. after throw-up episode number 1, he just didn’t get my message until late in the day due to cell phone malfunction.  Harumph. Suspect.

Anyhow, we went about our Sunday as planned, and Z seemed to be holding up just fine, playing and smiling as usual.  By Monday, he was pretty much back to his usual self, keeping food down and having solid poops.  Yes, I said poop.  It’s amazing how much attention you pay to your baby’s poo.   Or, it could be that the hubs and I might have a heightened fascination with the stuff as we find ourselves carefully examining the contents of LO’s diapers on a fairly regular basis.  Said contents then evoke several minutes worth of discussion.  Ahhh, the sweet romance of it all.

In contrast to my son’s ever-so-pleasant reaction to the nasties, I thought death might be a welcome relief from the violent nausea, puke, and dry heaves I was experiencing.  OMG- I just can’t stay away from the gory details, and besides, I love all of the euphemisms for the word vomit.  I was literally writhing on the bathroom floor, and when D got home, I did not hesitate to share my misery.

Thank GOD I suddenly got sick when our sitter was here- I was actually supposed to go to the gym.  Although I never would have had her over when I thought a virus was in the house, she was here anyway, and it would’ve been very interesting writhing on the bathroom floor, praying to the porcelain gods, while taking care of baby.  As the hubs had a later onset of the illness, he was able to come home from work early and relieve our sitter, put LO to bed, run to the store and by some pepto-bismol (which he preemptively took), and toss an extra quilt on the bed for me as I was suffering from hot/cold shivers.  All the while, (in case you forgot), I’m dry heaving and moaning loudly. 

If my baby son felt anything like I did, I cannot believe we didn’t hear more about it.  This experience has seriously made me question my pain tolerance.  I did, after all, plan a natural birth, and upon arriving at the hospital scream like a banchee for an epidural.  Perhaps that’s neither here nor there, but still.

Hubs got sick, too, though his symptoms weren’t quite as intense.  He didn’t throw up, but his other end wasn’t too happy.  I bet he’ll love that I just shared intimate details about his “other end” on a public website. To make it fair, neither of my ends were doin’ too well on Monday.

Again, we were both thanking our lucky stars that Z slept all the way through the night on Monday.

There is no real moral to this story other than the fact that I think we seriously lucked out in the temperament department with our child.  *I’m saying a silent prayer that I don’t eat my words some day.   We can also count our lucky stars that while the illness was violent, it was very short lived, and here we all are, happy and healthy once more.

Wash your hands lots this season!  There.  That’s the moral.