Thursday, August 27, 2009

Captain McBarfypants and his crazy mommy.


Being sick is like a party at our house. Especially if you throw up. You get a bed made just for you on the couch. You get Popsicles for every meal. You get to watch TV all day nonstop so that you don't run around the house full of nervous energy and make yourself puke again. Yeah, it's super fun to be sick.

Griffin came down with a tummy bug last night. I stumbled into the back bedroom with Koen (if you are new to this blog read this post about sleeping arrangements in our house) at 5 am to see that something was up. The light was on in the bathroom shining a bright light onto Griffin's empty bed, there was a pile of towels on the bathroom floor, once in our bedroom I saw that the comforter to our bed was on the floor. Roger and Griffin were both sleeping under a random sheet that Roger had grabbed from the linen closet. I shook Roger awake and he sleepily said "it was a rough night." I grabbed the baby and ran like hell back to the nursery at the other end of the house.

Okay, here comes a confession, I am crazy these days when it comes to germs. This whole over inflated swine flu crap has gotten me all mixed up. Plus, I think that I have a touch of postpartum anxiety. I have spooky images of my children succumbing to various diseases dancing in my head. My tummy spins and my heart rate speeds up just at the thought of it. This isn't normal. If you add a paranoid mommy with the media coverage of the swine flu it equals me going nutty.

To make matters worse, Koen has a cold as well. This is the first time that I have had 2 sick kids at the same time. I immediately wanted to quarantine Griffin. I was terrified of the thought of Koen catching whatever nasty illness Griffin had come down with. I felt overwhelmed and incapable of nursing two kids at once. I started to panic.

Then, at 6 am, with Koen crying pathetically in my arms, I decided that both of my children were dying of the swine flu. I started crying and getting all scared. It was horrible.

At 8 am, after obsessively looking up The Swine Flu on Google, I convinced myself that I had it too (Keep in mind that I have zero symptoms) and that we were all going to die. It's going around Athens at an alarming rate, and we had caught it.

Thank God I talked to the nurse at the pediatrician's office and she talked me down off the ledge. We all did not have the swine flu. Griffin has a very mild tummy bug that is going around. If Koen gets it, he will be cranky for two days and then be fine. I felt a little bit better.

I washed my hands over 150 times today, I'm sure. I would not let the kids get anywhere near each other. I was a nervous wreck all day, checking temperatures and shoving Tylenol into their unsuspecting mouths.

It took two more worried calls to the pediatricians office (yes, I am THAT mom) to convince me that we all are going to be okay. Even if we did get the Swine Flu, we are all healthy peeps over here. We would feel nasty and gross and then recuperate.

At 4 pm I finally accepted that no one was dying.

3 comments:

vanilla said...

It is a terrible thing when one's children are ill. And why all the scare tactics about the swine flu? What is going on? Something is not right.

Hope you get rest and relief.
Blessings.

Alicia said...

oh doll!! i hate days like this! and i'm totally the same way...i would bathe my kids in purell if i could. i stress about every sneeze!! it's out of control. i hope they're feeling better and i hope your anxiety has weaned now that you know your children will live!!

Marisa said...

I had to laugh at your description of yourself going crazy about the swine flu, because I am the SAME exact way about it. :)

We have to travel by airplane over the Christmas holiday this year with the baby, and I am CONVINCED he is going to catch swine flu from all the germs at the airport, etc. Ugh!!