I still remember this night so clearly – and am profoundly grateful, after reading about this week from last April, that we haven’t experienced the hell that is the stomach flu again…
There’s something magical about nighttime parenting. Something elemental and bare bones about it, when it’s the middle of the night, and your child is sick. When the bed is covered in vomit, and the baby is sobbing in confusion and misery and the only thing to do, the only thing to do is be the mom, in the best and most real sense.
It was two thirty in the morning, and Day Six (or is it Seven?) of one of my kids dealing with the stomach flu. I’ve scrubbed down the car seat more times than I can count, washed so much laundry that I legitimately fear I’ll never catch up again. I’ve got mixing bowls strategically placed all over the house, just in case the urge to throw up hits and they can’t get to the potty quick enough. I’ve only actually been puked on a couple of times, and have grown inordinately proud of my five year old’s ability to run for a bucket. But my baby, my tiny little almost two year old – she doesn’t know to reach for a bucket, and while she’s incredibly verbal, she didn’t have the words to tell me before she threw up all over the bed. All over me. All over her.
After a few minutes when she sobbed and retched and I rubbed her back and tried hard to keep it from getting on the king size comforter (the one too big to wash in my machine), it was over. I stripped us both, grabbing my husband’s t-shirt and some old sweats for me, and carrying her into the living room. I riffled thru the clean laundry basket for new jammies for her, and settled down on the couch in the dark living room. She was still whimpering, half asleep, horrified and confused. I snuggled her down in a blanket and nursed her. Grateful, because at two years old, she’s still nursing and I knew that it would calm her down and she’d be able to keep breastmilk down even if she couldn’t keep down the chicken and broccoli I’d fed her for dinner.
It was just the two of us. The birds were starting to sing outside, and the room was dark enough so I couldn’t see the clutter of toys and books on the floor. I was able to justbe for a while. To hold my baby girl when she was sick, when the only thing in the world that would make her world right was to be right here, in my arms, with her long eyelashes casting shadows on her cheek and her big, big eyes looking up at me. That, right there, that moment, that’s what makes me grateful for the middle of the night puke-fests of parenting. Sure, it’s messy and today, I can’t drink enough coffee to keep my eyes all the way open – but I know that last night is a night that I’ll remember when she’s five years old and tells me I’m the worst mother in the world, and when she’s nine and rolling her eyes at me when she thinks I’m not looking. I’ll remember when it was just she and I, a dark night, with birds chirping and big, big eyes gazing up at me.
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