Being Sara » illness

Have you ever had one of those days….

Sara — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:16:15 +0000

Where you haven’t slept in what feels like a month (but really it’s closer to a week). Your husband and 1-year-old are sick with an awful head cold which has caused all three of you to miss work and school a few days. You husband takes a much needed break to visit friends, leaving you home with the boys (and no car, but that’s usually not a big deal). After a lazy dinner, (just tea for you – you’re hoping the caffeine can sustain you through bedtime) you get the boys into their pajamas. There have been no less than 12 melt downs between the two of them since their father left and have I mentioned that you are almost falling asleep on your feet? When getting the 3 year old dressed, you notice a tic on his leg. Tics are icky, gross little blood-sucking creatures and while your first instinct is to say “eewww gross!” and leave the room, that’s not really an option. So you tell your son not to panic, and you try to get it out. You try everything you can think of (short of actually touching the icky bug with your fingers) and nothing works. Your 3-year-old is freaking out at the bug on his leg that won’t come off, and your 1-year-old is crying so that he won’t be left out of the chaos.

So, you rally and call your husband. Only, your cell phone doesn’t get reception upstairs, so you close the door to the bedroom where the boys are (leaving them both screaming behind it) and go downstairs to call. Your husband isn’t certain about proper tic removal either (the first one either of you have had to deal with). He stops to look it up on the internet. While waiting you try calling a few other people to see if they know anything. After a few answering machines, you finally get a family member who tells you to get a match.

At this point, your emotional damn breaks. The exhaustion and screaming children and all aloneness out in the woods feeling and the tic and sick kids and the image of trying to a) light a match (which you have never done because you don’t like your hands that close to fire) and b) get said match anywhere near a 3-year-old who by this point has completely lost his shit and vomited on the carpet seems pretty impossible. You thank them for their suggestions and hang up. A few more failed attempts to reach your husband, and finally you get him on the phone, you’re in tears, the kids are screaming and he decides to come home and rescue the lot of you.

Finally, the tic is out. The kids are calm. Your husband heads back out after everything is under control. A few Phineas and Ferb cartoons later (because you’re really too tired to do much actual interacting or playing with the kids) the 1-year-old goes to sleep without complaint.

A little while later, you put the 3-year-old to bed. He complains that his stomach hurts, but he’s one of those sympathetic illness kids – if anyone in the vicinity is sick, so is he (according to him). You tuck him in and tell him to get some rest, and then collapse on the couch for a few minutes.

As you finally stumble to bed at 10:30, you think, “ok Universe, I’ve had 2 sick family members for almost a week now. I haven’t slept, I’ve lost my appetite, and I’m home alone with the kids tonight, the tic calamity was exhausting. I need one good night, just one good night sleep to get back on track” It’s almost as if you can hear a little evil laugh off in distance as your head hits the pillow.

Literally minutes later, your 3-year-old wakes up and asks you to rub his back. After that is done, you fall back into bed with a sigh, and then moments later, he wakes up again, asking for a paper towel to throw up in. Well, you know this isn’t the best idea ever, and you drag his sleepy butt to the bathroom where he does indeed get sick, but manages to get most of it into the toilet.

You call your husband at 11:30 and say, “Please come home now” to which he responds “should I call the hospital and find out if we need to bring him in since’s he’s vomiting after that tic bite?” Great. Now you’re worrying about a stomach flu and Lyme disease. Awesome. After a late-night call to the pediatrician, you a relieved to learn that the vomiting and tic probably aren’t related, and there isn’t any need to worry about Lyme disease. The pattern of waking up, vomiting on a towel in bed, and then making it to the bathroom to vomit some more proceeds like clockwork every few hours throughout the rest of the night. The Universe has scoffed at your desperate plea for sleep and instead given you the duty of cleaning up pile after pile of vomit. You must have really pissed off the Universe.

Three towels, three t-shirts and one pillow and pillow case later, dawn finally arrives. The 3-year-old manages not to vomit in your bed, but does manage to hit the carpet, the hard wood floor, his shirt and pants as well as your shirt just before you leave for work.

Oh yeah, can’t forget that. After this most recent night of torture, you get to get your sorry butt out of bed and into work where you need to somehow become a productive member of society for 8 hours. Good luck with that. Those days suck, don’t they?

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So Tired…

Sara — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 14:31:12 +0000

I have 3/4 of a post written for today, but I’m too tired to finish it. I’m too tired to focus my brain or my eyes. If this chair I’m sitting in reclined, I’d be asleep in seconds.

Parker has been sick since Saturday (today is Thursday for those of you keeping track). Every night since Saturday he has woken up somewhere between 12am and 2am. Every night since Saturday he has stayed awake for anywhere between 2 and 4 hours.

You forget how much you enjoy sleeping between 12am and 4am until you can’t do it 4 days in a row.

Zach is also sick. I have to give the guy credit though. Despite the exhaustion and complete face leak he’s been suffering, he’s still gotten up with Parker and me every night, and helped with every other kid duty. He’s feeling awful, but hasn’t let it slow him down in the kid assistance department which has been awesome.

But I’m still so tired. The kind of exhaustion you feel when you have a 2 week old baby who nurses around the clock kind of tired. Nearly falling asleep at your desk or driving your kids home from day care tired.

When is someone going to call me up and tell me that they’ve booked a quiet hotel room for me to crash in for a week? Because that’s what I really need at this point. I need a week of uninterrupted sleep, sleep and more sleep. I’ll try to get a more coherent post up sometime after I’ve managed more than 2 consecutive hours of sleep…

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What’s worse than a sick kid? Two sick kids…

Sara — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:06:53 +0000

I’m coming out of radio silence this week after juggling two rather sick boys for the week. It started last Sunday with two very cranky boys. We went for a drive to get out of the house – Xander of course needed to pee and for the first time ever, we got turned down when we asked to use a restroom. Where, you ask? The Campton Cupboard. They have zero sympathy for pee-pee dancing 3 year-olds, so don’t even try. Also, if you try to use the restroom in the Dunkin’ Donuts in Campton, be forewarned that it’s easier to pee outside than it is to try to skip in front of rude tourists in line.

Fast forward to several sleepless nights and two days home, first with Xander and then with Parker (who managed to catch another bout of RSV, complete with a 101.6 temperature and back onto nebulizer treatments). Parker is still waking up between 2:30 and 3:30 every morning for a few hours, and Xander is still crying every morning that he doesn’t feel good and doesn’t want to go to school (please note that by the time we arrive at school he is running to get inside and play with his friends, so we’re not taking those complaints too seriously).

Evenings have been EXHAUSTING. First, one kid will cry, and then before one of us can calm that one down, the other starts crying so we’ve had an almost constant flow of tears between the hours of 5pm and 8pm for the past 5 days. Yeah, I’m on my pity wagon – all are welcome! I’m hopeful that we’ll turn the corner this weekend and start to see more smiling and less crying.

Unfortunately, Xander has rediscovered his love of puzzles recently. He’s getting quite good at putting them together on his own. The biggest challenge is that Parker firmly believes that his primary role in our family is to pick up puzzle pieces and put them in boxes. He couldn’t care less if anyone else might have wanted to use that particular piece. This of course starts a great deal of arguments and the cycle continues until Parker goes to sleep. Ah, the joys of parenthood…

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Xander Week 59 – The Flu…

Sara — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 14:50:23 +0000

Just after Thanksgiving Xander came down with the flu. It started with some restless nights, and then he started eating less. Then at about 3am on Sunday morning after Thanksgiving I awoke to Xander and Zach covered in vomit. It was of course, miserable getting the two of them cleaned up. And just after we had all settled down again – Xander in our bed, the little guy got sick again, necessitating a change of my clothes and the sheets….

The next week went pretty much like that. The only plus was that after the first day, Xander didn’t have any real food coming back up, so it was mostly just water. After 3 days we called our doctor, and after 4, we made an appointment with them. They had us giving Xander 1 tablespoon of water every 5 minutes until he could keep it down. From there, we gradually introduced Gatorade, and then finally after a week of this, we started introducing carbohydrate-heavy food. The doctor told us that the sweet smell to Xander’s breath was his body burning muscle instead of fat, because he had already used up all of his reserves of fatty cells.

It was a very long week. As I get paid hourly, we couldn’t afford for me to stay home, so Zach stayed home with Xander for three days. I felt terrible that I couldn’t stay home with him, and he was just so miserable – he was just a limp noodle for almost a week. As he was starting to recover, and starting to feel hungry again, it was so hard on us – he would stumble to the refrigerator, and then hold onto the handles and cry – clearly indicating that he wanted something to eat or drink, but since he was barely able to keep down Gatorade, we couldn’t really give him much to eat at that point.

Finally, he was able to keep down some peanut butter toast, and then some buttered noodles, and then he was ready to eat just about anything. It was so hard to see him so sick, and know that there wasn’t anything we could do to help him. The flu is a miserable experience – even if you aren’t the one getting sick.

baby, toddler, parent, parents, parenting, mother, mothers, motherhood, illness, sickness, flu, vomit, Gatorade

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I Am A Spit-up Magnet!

Sara — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 13:39:12 +0000

I’m not sure how I became a target, but somehow Xander has decided that spitting up on me is the best place to get sick. It doesn’t matter how vigilant I am with a burp cloth, Xander will save his spit-up for times when I’m not burping him, and have of course forgotten the cloth over my shoulder. In the past 3 weeks I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been on the receiving end of spit-up. One eventful night Xander got my t-shirt – but I was prepared for that, and had a spare t-shirt next to the bed. After I changed my t-shirt, I nursed Xander, and he managed to spit up on my pants. I wasn’t prepared for that, so Zach held the baby while I changed my pajama bottoms. As I took Xander back, he managed to spew spit-up into my hair (I had it pulled back, that kid just has a special knack for getting spit-up everywhere!), so at 4:30 am I found myself in the shower… Yesterday Xander managed to spit up on two sweaters (both dry clean only…), and this weekend he managed to spew what looked like 4 ounces of milk all over the both of us – before I could even get him to the burp cloth on my shoulder! Why is any of this interesting? Because Xander doesn’t spit up on anyone else – just me. Well, to be accurate, he did catch our friend Sandee with some this past weekend, but other than that isolated incident, I think I have caught all of Xander’s spit-up, and I don’t spend as much time with him these days, as Zach is at home with him during the day, and gets up with him at night. Somehow in the 6 hours during the week and the weekends Xander manages to save all of his spit-up time for me – I don’t wear perfume, Zach and I use the same shampoo, laundry detergent, etc., so I’m hoping that it isn’t something about my scent that makes my kid ill, but at this point I’m starting to worry that something about me makes my kid sick…

babies, baby, burping, illness, infant, nursing, sick baby, spit-up

Being Sara » illness

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