What a Life!

Was Joey really sick last weekend? Or was he just teething?

Yesterday I discovered a second tooth – perhaps the reason for his lack of good naps and frequent awakenings during the night? He was fussy all day – either I was holding him or he was crying. Poor guy!

Then yesterday evening, I gave Joey some Tylenol, hoping he would sleep, and then went over to Julie’s house for some knitting, wine, and delightful conversation. As I was getting ready to leave, Steve called. Ben had just thrown up all over his bed and gotten the sheets and his jammies dirty. I told him I was on my way, and he asked me to stop for some Gatorade.

I stopped for Gatorade, and then again for some ice (I didn’t think about the ice until after I left the grocery store, and since I’d had to wait in line behind all these people doing their weekly grocery shopping at 9:00 on Friday night because there was no express checkout lane open, I decided to stop at a gas station near home for the ice). Right after I got back in the car with the ice (about forty minutes later), I got another call from Steve: he’d gotten Ben all cleaned up, changed his sheets, put fresh jammies on him, gotten him back in bed, and Ben had promptly thrown up and gotten everything dirty all over again. I told him I would be right there.

Oh joy and rapture!

Joey only got up twice last night, but we got up four times with Ben. A couple times with vomit. Then a couple times with diarhea. Poor kid! At this point, I don’t think there is much left in him that could come out so things have slowed down a little.

When your kid is sick, you ask yourself, “What could I do that would make them as comfortable as possible?” Some kids want to curl up on the couch and watch TV. Others want to be held.

Ben’s bed doesn’t happen to be the most comfortable place right now since the comfortor and every set of twin-size sheets we own is being washed (some things were washed during the night and put back on for another round, only to be taken off again – at this point, it’s a hodge-podge of whatever bedding we could find for him).

I got out the little radio Dad bought him while my parents were in town, and I been playing CDs for him. The radio is on the dining room table, and he’s made a bed for himself on the floor beneath it with a pillow and his favorite blankie (which was washed and hasn’t been soiled again…yet). The little things that bring comfort…

One note of progress from when he was sick back in January…at that point, we couldn’t get him to vomit into the toilet, much less a metal bowl, so I had to just hold an old towel in front of him. Well, this go-round, we have managed to get him to vomit into the toilet (that is, when we notice he’s about to throw up and catch it in time…). A bit of noteworthy progress, none the less…

And last night, during one of the times we got up with Ben, Steve waxed sentimental and asked, “Where would I be if I didn’t have a wife and children?”

His answer to his own question: “In bed, sound asleep.”

The things we do for love…

Steve got me a 64 oz. jug of Gatorade last night, which I drank half of…and I’m feeling much better this morning…at least as far as my digestive system is concerned. However, I am so tired I fear I might fall asleep at the keyboard while I am typing this…so be warned!

Joey seems to have his days and nights mixed up.

Okay, I know. It’s newborns that have that problem. They’re used to resting while mommy “rocks” them to sleep during the day by going about her daily adventures and then they wake up at night while mommy sleeps. He’s six months old so we’re well past that stage.

Here’s the problem: he’s so interested in what’s going on around him and exploring his little world that he is hardly interested in eating during the day. Yeah. Then at night, of course, he is starved and can hardly wait for me to change his diaper because his tummy is so hungry. You should hear the racket he makes. Ben seems to sleep through most of it, but even Steve swears he woke up every time Joey did last night.

He even woke up three times in one hour. I don’t know if it’s the nightlight I have in the room so I can see to change his diaper without having to turn a light on or what…but he thinks it’s time to play. Or maybe I need to remove all his toys – just a teddy bear and a set of cloth stacking rings – from his crib so he isn’t tempted to play. I don’t know. He rolls over like he does when he’s awake and done with his nap (or when you put him to bed and he doesn’t want to go to sleep). Then he lies there and talks happily as though it’s the middle of the day. What is with this kid?

It’s funny because with so many of the things Joey is so interested in, Ben hardly paid attention to at all. Ben never played with the rings when he was this age. He didn’t play with the toys on the bouncy seat. Joey’s even already interested in the TV remote. And his feet. Very, very interesting. Ben was more of an observer who also crawled two weeks after he learned to sit – would that have anything to do with it?

Joey is also far more interactive than Ben ever was. They talk about how you should narrate and talk to them while you change their diaper and such. Perhaps I was just a dumb, inexperienced Mom but I didn’t do that with Ben much. He was all business, though, when he had his diaper changed or ate. For Joey, getting your diaper changed is a social event. He gets all excited and laughs and talks with you enthusiastically. I am not sure if it is the attention or the fresh bottom he’s getting that makes him like it so much. [I’m hoping at least some of the latter so he will mind a little when he wets himself, which doesn’t seem to bother Ben and makes potty training, well, difficult.]

But how to get his days and nights back straight is the big mystery at the moment. I try to nurse him during the day at a place where there are as few distractions as possible. But many times, he simply isn’t interested in eating. Even if we’re in a quiet, calm place, he wants to go do something fun, ya know? He’ll wake up from a two hour nap and you’d think he’d want to eat, but no he just wants to play. If I can actually get him to eat, the meal is very abbreviated.

I may be so tired I feel like a truck ran over me, but I’ve sworn off the caffeine. When you’re not used to it, it really does a number on you. At least for me, it suppresses my appetite and cleans out my entire digestive system. If I ever need to have on of those tests done like a colonoscopy or something where you have to get all cleaned out and everything, I can skip the chalky stuff they give you ’cause a couple Mt. Dew’s should do the trick. Seriously.

Now, back to regularly scheduled programming…

So, I don’t know if it’s the caffeine I drank yesterday after getting up at 4:30 a.m. or some version of what Joey had last weekend, but I’ve had a case of the “trots” over the last day or so. [Really, I am going somewhere with this – not trying to gross anyone out or anything…]

Now as a mother, privacy is one of those things that you give up when you give birth. Not only do you go through the act of giving brith, you also have little shadows who follow you everywhere you go – both at home and away. I’ll never forget my first Mother’s Day after Ben was born – I told Steve all I wanted was to go to the bathroom by myself; so that day, everytime I wanted to go to the bathroom, Steve would distract Ben so I could have a moment of privacy. Of course, never is this fact of life more fun than when you have the trots…

Today we made a trip to town that included the grocery store. While we were shopping, I decided a trip to the bathroom was in order. I herded everyone – me and my entourage – into the handicapped stall and then sat down on the toilet.

Ben, the play-by-play announcer, said, “Mommy’s going potty.”

…immediately followed by a very serious, “Mommy’s going to make noise.”

Thanks, Ben!

This morning…make that last night…Joey got up at 11:00, 1:00 and 4:30. Let me tell you, I yearn for those days when he only got up once and my bed was soaked with breastmilk.

Anyway…at 4:30, he was wide awake. As in, happy and talking. I changed him. Nursed him. Put him back to bed. No cigar. I didn’t want Ben to wake up at that hour – my day would really be off to a bad start! So I brought Joey in to bed with us. He laid their and talked and I let him hold my finger and then, as usual, he tried to gum it.

And then I felt something sharp. Ach! A tooth! Joey has a toofer!

Oh my!

Again, totally new experience for me. Ben never put anything in his mouth, much less let anyone feel in there. So I never knew whether he had teeth until they were really obvious. Joey’s first tooth can be seen if you know exactly where to look and make the most of opportunities when they knock.

He was fussy last night – no throw up – and I even took his temperature to see if he was sick again. It was 99-something, which was only a low-grade fever if you want to go so far as to call it that. [No, I didn’t give him anything for it.]

The Expert, who knows more about my children than I do, told Steve this weekend that ‘doctor’s will tell you otherwise but every experienced mother knows that fever goes along with teething.’ So Steve thinks the whole ordel with Joey being sick this weekend was due to his teething.

I’ll go along with the idea that his “fever” last night was due to teething, but I think his being sick last weekend might be stretching it just a little. Just because the rest of us haven’t gotten it doesn’t mean he wasn’t sick – I can’t tell you how many times Steve has been sick (and even stayed home from work) but the rest of us never got whatever it was that he had. All I have to say is that we’ll see next time he has a tooth come in if he throws up an entire meal, has a fever of 102.2, and has diahrea for five days. Yeah, we’ll see…

For the record, he did go back to sleep shortly before six o’clock. But by then, I was wide awake. I’m thinking a cup of coffee might be in order, especially considering that this is the second cloudy day we’ve had in a row where I needed to turn on the lights upstairs in order to be able to see.

Remember [Un]Gracious Host who would not let [Un]Gracious Guest have the TV on as background noise all day…

Did you hear that this week (April 23 – 29) is National TV Turnoff Week? Yes, it is. In fact, there is a whole organization devoted to getting people to watch less TV: www.tvturnoff.org.

In case you’re interested, here is a handy fact sheet from that site with some food for thought: Warning: Too Much TV is Hazardous to your Health.

I was raised without a TV – as in, we did not own a TV at all. I am not advocating such a stark reality for everyone. In fact, I will admit that we do own two TVs – one in the living room and one in the bedroom [note: none in the bedrooms or the dining room]. We do use them to watch specific shows. Steve likes to watch TV occasionally to unwind in the evening, but I find it extremely difficult to go to sleep after spending an hour watching TV, especially mindless surfing. It drives me absolutely crazy when he switches channels during the advertisements because he gets bored and then goes from show to show to show and never really watches anything. For the most part, my husband is kind enough to go downstairs and do that (I’m usually upstairs at that time of day).

I tried the no TV thing upstairs for a while, but brought it back when NASCAR season started. I love watching the races and knitting and planning my week. I don’t sit there and just watch it, but I like having it on in the background and listening to it as I do other things. I like sports for that reason – seeing someone go through the process of winning or losing gives me perspective on my own life. In fact, I’ve gotten into enjoying watching baseball because I love the stats – if you hit the ball once during the three times you’re up to the plate, you’re doing good, and every time you’re up to the plate, you get three strikes, four balls, and as many fouls as you want once you have two strikes. So hitting the ball once every three times you’re up to the plate is like hitting it once out of every twenty attempts – my life is much easier than that! So I watch sports on the weekends – one event on Sunday – for that very reason.

Other than that, I like to watch my daily news show – Special Report with Brit Hume like some people like to watch their favorite soap opera. I love politics – I find it very interesting to observe politicians and how they play the game of politics. I especially love hearing the round-table discussion during the last twenty minutes of the show – it goes beyond just reporting the facts by offering various viewpoints on what has happened and is going to happen.

I tried getting rid of the TV during supper time, but my news show is on from 5 to 6 and I feel kind of mean telling everyone I can watch my news show but then they aren’t allowed to watch TV. Steve likes to watch TV then to relax, and he’s gotten addicted to a couple shows on the Food Channel, no less. So instead of sitting at the supper table and enjoying our meal together as a family, we’re usually watching TV while we eat supper, which is “hazardous for your health.” When I removed the TV, though, so we would eat our meals together as a family and talk to each other, perhaps, it was met with gruff silence. In addition to wanting to watch my news show and NASCAR races, I decided that perhaps I would find other times where we would spend quality time together as a family. No great solutions yet, but it’s still my underlying intention.

…And as a postscript to the [Un]Gracious Host/[Un]Gracious Guest saga…it all came to an end last weekend when the former landlady of [Un]Gracious Guest died and the new landlord told [Un]Gracious Guest that his daughter would live on the other side of the duplex and she wouldn’t have to move out. [Sigh of relief]

I’ve been a SAHM since Ben was born. And as a SAHM, I’ve always felt bad for the plight of working parents when their children get sick and they can’t send them to daycare so they have to stay home. I can only imagine what chaos that would add to your life. Especially if there was something really important you needed to get done at work that day. But of course, this sympathy was only in my imagination – I had never been there myself.

Until this weekend.

I had been looking forward to our Knitting Guild meeting for weeks. We get together every two weeks, but two weeks ago I had company in town so I was unable to join everyone. I was really looking forward to getting out of the house and spending some time with other adults doing one of my favorite things…knitting.

But Friday afternoon, Joey had had a haphazard nap schedule and was rather grumpy (or so I thought). He woke up at 5:00 and I fed him. Then I set him down on the floor and started playing the piano. He was getting fussier and fussier…and I thought it was just our crazy day with going to town and everything. Around 5:40 I was playing Fur Elise (which I haven’t played in a while since I didn’t have a piano and there were a couple parts I was polishing up on) and I had to stop in the middle of the song because his fussing had just reached, you know, that point.

I picked him up and sat him in my lap. A few moments later, he threw up. As in a little fountain. His entire meal – cottage cheese at this point. All over him. All over me. Even some on the floor.

And being the mother of the same child who had pyloric stenosis when he was seven weeks old and he was throwing up and couldn’t keep anything down and I had to take him to the emergency room and they told us he had to have surgery or he would die so we spent four days in the hospital with the surgery and him getting better and everything…I. Flipped. Out.

Oh my goodness!

I cleaned him up, cleaned myself up, and tried to clean the vomit off the rug (we have wood floors upstairs and wouldn’t you know…he’d throw up on the rug). When Steve got home, I had everyone put back together – on the outside at least – and I was sitting on the couch freaking out.

Steve asked me how I was doing.

I told him Joey had just thrown up – not just spit-up, no, projectile throw-up.

Like when he had pyloric stenosis?

Yes. [The look on my face should have said it all.]

I decided to take his temperature. I must confess, I have never taken my child’s temperature before – my children have never needed such a procedure as a rectal temperature. But I thought he felt a bit hot so I decided to try and figure out how to do it. I did it like I remembered seeing the nurses do it at the hospital when Joey was born. The reading? 102.2

Good news and bad news. No mother wants her child to run a fever. But when had pyloric stenosis, there was no fever. And he’d pooped at least twice that day, something he didn’t do – couldn’t do – when he had pyloric stenosis (because nothing was able to get through thanks to that little overgrown muscle at the exit of the stomach that they had to cut up).

But still…

I called the doctor. I told him, “I know I’m completely overreacting…but my child (who is six months old and had pyloric stenosis when he was seven weeks old) just threw up and has a fever of 102.2.”

The doctor was very kind. [I think it was the same one who was on call when Joey had pyloric stenosis.] He told me to go ahead and put him to bed like normal. Then he thought Joey would wake up sometime between 8 and 9 and that I should take his temperature and go ahead and try to feed him if he wanted to eat. If he still wasn’t feeling well at that point, I could take him in if I wanted.

Joey wasn’t ready to go to bed at his normal time (6:30). I held him and rocked him and did everything I could to make him comfortable. At 7:00, I decided to give him Tylenol, after Steve helped me figure out how much to give him (my ability to think rationally was slightly compromised…). Once he was asleep, I called the local after-hours clinic to see how late they were open – if I took him there, it would cost me a simple office visit co-pay; taking him to the emergency room, after our deductible was met and everything, would cost us about $1000 (I may not have been 100% rational, but I could still figure that out).

He woke up at 8:30 and his temp was still 101.5. I fed him, and he seemed to keep it down okay. But since his temperature was still high and I was overreacting, I decided to take him in to see the doctor. All the staff there thought he was so cute. The doctor checked him and his ears were fine, his throat was fine, and his abdomen felt fine too. The doctor told me there was a bug going around and his kids had had it – it started with vomiting and then morphed into diarhea; one of his kids was over it in four days, the other was sick for a week.

Joey never threw up again. But I did take his temperature and gave him Tylenol three times on Saturday in order to help keep him comfortable. And I stayed home and cancelled all my fun plans for the day (more than just the knitting guild meeting). I was so sad and disappointed. But in almost four years of being a mother (Ben will be four in July), I should count myself lucky that this is the first time this has happened to me…where I had to cancel all my plans and stay home because I had a child who was sick. For everything, there has to be a first time, and I guess for me, this was it.

Today, Joey still has diarhea. He must have woken up with it this morning – he was fussing and Ben was still asleep so I went in there and tried to change his diaper in the dark as I usually do in the middle of the night and all of a sudden I felt this slimy stuff all over my hands that kind of burned. I turned on the light – which woke Ben up – and sure enough, there was poop everywhere. Joey sure was happy when I got it all cleaned up. Now I know why we’ve been battling diaper rash over the past few days as well.

Last week I had scheduled Joey’s six-month well-baby doctor visit for yesterday, and I took him in as planned. I mentioned to our doctor that he had been six over the weekend, and that, of course, after his having pyloric stenosis, I had totally overreacted. [This is why I love our family doctor… He has thirteen children of his own, and one of them, he told us when Joey was in the hospital, also had pyloric stenosis; in his case, even though his daddy was a doctor, he went down hill very fast and it was quite the experience.]

So when I told him that Joey had been sick and that I totally overreacted, he laughed and told me that his wife gets that way too when their son who had pyloric stenosis gets sick. When any of their other children get sick, they have to be strong and tough it out. But when that boy gets sick, he has to sit on the couch and isn’t allowed to do anything and she gets all in a tizzy over it. It doesn’t matter how old he is – she still gets that way whenever he gets sick and throws up. He said, Once you have that experience, it’s really hard to forget. I must say, I feel her pain.

Joey is sleeping now. Hopefully the diarhea part will end soon. He’s been a bit fussier – a lot fussier when he had a fever – but overall he’s done quite well. None of the rest of us have seemed to come down with it…yet. I think he got it from being held by someone else while they treat me at the chiropractor’s office – that is the only opportunity I can think of where he would be exposed to something the rest of us weren’t exposed to. The clinic doctor told us it’s quite contagious, though, so we have yet to see if any of the rest of us will get sick (I don’t know what the incubation time is – we’d been at the chiropractor’s office on Monday afternoon and Friday morning, and he got sick late Friday afternoon).

Here’s to hoping for the best!