Sick day

It’s sad how, when I think about it, CJ hasn’t fallen asleep in my arms since he was a baby. I still remember those nights when we first brought him home and even for months after, when I would sing to him and plead with him to please JUST FALL ASLEEP. Most nights I would cry, I was so tired. I would cry and sing and rock him and sometimes, magically, he would fall asleep as I held him. Each time it happened I would count it as a miracle.

So we did that again today. But I wasn’t crying, and I wasn’t rocking him. We were in his big recliner, reading stories before nap, and after I closed our book of fairy tales I told him how good he’d been at the doctor today, and how brave he was when the doctor had to swab the back of his throat, how it was amazing that he didn’t cry until after the doctor left and I wouldn’t let him eat the secret stash of marshmallows he found in my diaper bag.

CJ has Strep throat. I came home last night to Chris and CJ spooning on the couch, a rare position for them only because CJ’s not one to sit still for very long, definitely not long enough to spoon with someone. He said he was too tired to eat, and when I felt his head for a fever I marveled at how old the skin on my hand looked next to the young, porcelain skin of his face. Fever confirmed, I looked at his throat and saw redness and inflammation, and that telltale white pus they say to look out for with Strep.

As we arrived at the doctor today, I had mixed feelings. Part of me can’t stand to see my child sick and definitely hoped the fever was a one-off that meant nothing. But part of me almost wanted him to have Strep because (1) I’d have been right with my at-home diagnosis (and really, it’s all about me, isn’t it?) and (2) strep is TREATABLE. It’s not, “Well, this virus has been lasting anywhere from four to six weeks, and while we can’t recommend you give your child any cold medicine, try a teaspoonful of honey when his cough gets really bad,” which is what I heard at the doctor last month when I took CJ in. Instead, THERE’S A CURE: antibiotics! And not just antibiotics, the FIRST antibiotic, Penicillin!

So, CJ’s had approximately one teaspoonful of cherry flavored penicillin, half of which I had to force down his throat because the kid that, sick or not, asks for bubble-gum Tylenol and berry-flavored ibuprofen on a near-daily basis, somehow doesn’t like this. I tried explaining that there are some things in life that we don’t like but have to do anyway, especially if it’s for the good of others, which this is. Then I tried to talk about germs and not making other kids at his daycare sick and his eyes glazed over and he asked if we could go watch another episode of Max and Ruby.

For now he sleeps, and the part of me that hoped he had Strep also hopes he takes an extra-long nap. But the other part of me can’t believe that my tiny baby, the one I swaddled and rocked and sang to and cried on all those months ago, has his first bout of Strep throat and is taking his first round of antibiotics. This is one milestone I hoped we wouldn’t get to so soon.

Push it

As I sat on the floor with my son this afternoon, cheering him on as he pushed out a particularly constipated batch of poop, it occurred to me just how much time I spend encouraging people to push ridiculously large things through impossibly small holes. Why have I chosen this as my profession? Who am I kidding? It never gets any easier.

CJ was lying in the lithotomy position, his legs in the air (fashioning a pair of tiny stirrups out of shoeboxes and flip-flops did cross my mind), and I could do nothing but look at the tears streaming down his face and say stupid things like, “Good job, bud!” and “A tiny piece! You pushed out a tiny piece!” Some of the kernels he had early on looked like petrified chocolate chips, like his body had leeched every ounce of water and nutrition possible before finally allowing him to let them go.

CJ worked on this poop for literally 45 minutes, easily the longest he’s spent on any poop in his short, constipation-thwarted life (and incidentally, almost as long as it took me to push him out). I knew he was tired, I knew he wanted to be done, and it absolutely killed me that I could do nothing to help him. I mean, let’s be honest, the kid needed an epidural. (I did take a moment to imagine what that would look like: me running into the emergency room, flushed with fear and adrenaline, CJ limp from effort in my arms, naked butt hanging out for all the world to see, “He’s been working on this poop for 20 minutes and there’s no end in sight—somebody get him and epidural and let’s dig that sucker out!” But then I wondered how old you really had to be to get an epidural, wondered how small CJ’s epidural space must be, and ultimately decided it wouldn’t be worth the trip.)

Laboring moms get tired too. Sometimes they give up. They say things like, “I can’t do this anymore.” They say, “I want a C-section.” And sometimes I get in their face and tell them to focus, that they can do it, that they need to do it, because the baby hanging halfway out of their vagina needs them to do it. And then they do and then it’s fine and the pain is gone and in its place is a baby.

I couldn’t get in CJ’s face today, though. I couldn’t tell him to just push and it would be over, that the pain would be gone after the poop came out. I tried, I really did, but I just couldn’t. I had to step away after ten minutes and again at 40, when I couldn’t bear his cries or my helplessness any longer. The second time, I was in my room looking through a magazine while my kid was feet away in the hallway, whimpering. Sooner than I expected he called out, “Mommy!” and I rushed back to him, ready for another go-round. But instead there was an adult-sized log of poop on the floor, easily two inches thick, and CJ was smiling. “Mommy, I did it.”

We all have mommy guilt, and we all have kid issues we have to deal with. In the grand scheme of things, I realize it could be a lot worse than the occasional bout of constipation. But today was just awful, I felt just horrible for CJ, and I wanted to call Chris so many times over the course of those 45 minutes, if nothing else than to have someone with whom to share the pain. But I didn’t, I didn't give in. It was just me and CJ, and we did it, in his words. We did it.

Retrospective

It has been recently pointed out to me that I’m an external processor. And rather than spew my problems at home, work, or to anyone that will listen, I thought it might be a good idea to reinstate ye olde blog. I stopped writing when CJ was 14 months old (notice I don’t say July 2009, because after you have a kid you cease measuring time with Caesar’s calendar and everything becomes relative to how long your precious offspring has been in this world), and then I tried to start again when he was 21 months old (February 2010), but that fizzled out too. So we can consider this my third attempt, or my triumphant return to Pammiecakes after an extended summer hiatus.

With this blog I hope to explore many themes. Themes in my life; themes like how it feels to split my time between work and home, mommy guilt, whether or not I really need a second baby, and what it’s like to deal with all of these home/family issues and be a labor and delivery nurse at the same time.

I’ll label these posts with tags, tags like PTSAHM, which will stand for part-time stay-at-home-mom, Splinched, which is how I feel when I have to split my time between work and home, and Mommy guilt, which while I could think of a cute way to label it, may as well be the title of this blog. 'Do you want seconds' will be for my second baby posts, and 'Just deal with it' will be the label I use when I attempt to talk about balancing it all.

So join me on this journey, won’t you? Join me as we explore The Chronicles of my Overexamined Life.