Being Sara

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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