That's Sick

OMG! If you find (or have recently found) your head buried so deep in the toilet that you could swab the rim clean with your tongue, I feel your pain. Thursday night at 8pm I was the most recent victim of the puke patrol – every hour on the hour for the better part of 24 hours. I wanted to die … or maybe I did for a minute or two, not sure, it gets a little fuzzy around the 3am mark when I had to crawl out of the shower (shampoo still in hair) and lay flat on the floor to keep from passing out (nice!). While I have to admit I’m quite proud of the 7lbs I lost that day (which lingering nausea has now ratcheted up to 12), the projectile sessions threw Chris and me for a parental loop: What do we do with Coop when one of is seriously sick?

Since my yuck didn’t hit until after Coop went to bed and Chris got him ready in the AM and took him to daycare, I wasn’t around the baby when I was feeling really poorly. But when the boys got home Friday afternoon we were suddenly at a loss of what to do. We talked about Chris and Coop spending the night out because we didn’t want to risk getting the baby sick. But because I was feeling so awful (and had spiked a fever at this point) I started crying at the thought of being left alone. (And as a still overprotective, new-to-the-role of mom, mom, I refused to consider letting someone keep Coop at their house overnight without Chris there. Even on my puke bed, I was the ever-watchful Mama Bear looking out for her cub). I can still see Chris leaning against the door frame of our room, hand to his head, saying, “What do we do, babe?”

We were both miserable and felt so lost by our lack of preparation. How could we not have come up with a game plan? I guess we were so busy counting our lucky stars that Coop had yet to come down with something serious that we neglected to consider that we might be the ones in jeopardy. Oops.

Hard lesson to learn. Chris and Coop ended up crashing at his dad’s while I popped Tylenol PM and slept for hours on end. By the time the boys were back the next morning, we had to do the ol’ switch-a-roo: Chris had been pegged by the puke patrol. I grabbed the baby and we headed to A-town just in time to make it to my little sister’s bridal shower.

It’s now Sunday evening and thankfully Coop is showing no signs of the yuck. Our fingers are crossed that our last-minute slumber parties protected our little guy from falling prey to the puke patrol.

But, there’s always daycare to contend with tomorrow, at which we’ve heard the puke patrol is recruiting hard and heavy. Sigh.

-smell you later-
Coop’s Mom (aka Tessa)