Nobody likes being sick.
But it happens, and we deal with it. But being sick and having kids makes you think wistfully about the times you took that day off work to feel miserable, alone, and sleep.
With pregnancy #1 I got food poisoning at 6 months. I threw up so much I burst blood vessels in my eyes, which was both impressive and horrible at the same time. But kid #1 was very not sick for 18 months – thanks to both vaccines and the isolation that staying at home with mum can give you.
Then kid #2 came along, and kid #1 went into daycare. Ah, daycare. The breeding ground for bugs. The kids got them, then I did. My partner-in-crime seemed to escape some of them, but was laid low with others.
Have you ever sat up late at night, nursing a miserable child that can’t breathe through their nose while the other cries because they have a headache and don’t want to drink water, while your own head thumps and your nose runs and you’re desperate for just five minutes of shut-eye? Have you ever breast-fed your child while you have a stomach bug and held a bucket over them so you don’t vomit on the child while you fed them? Have you ever heard the hiccup of doom, picked up the child and had the child vomit all over you?
It’s not fun when the kids are sick. You feel for them, and want them to get better. You nurse them and give them medicine and hope you don’t get it too.
But inevitably you do, mainly because you haven’t slept, and your immune system is fighting that first.
It’s sheer misery when you’re just as sick as they are, or worse. The kids have had snotty noses and had trouble breathing while sleeping, which is a nightmare in its own right, but when you’re running a high fever and have to wake up every hour to feed them and change them and nurse them? When they both cry at the same time and the reverberation in your eardrums (which are blocked already) gives you a splitting migraine? That’s what breaks you.
The other weekend kid #1 gave the hiccup of doom and then spent 7 hours vomiting. I hoped I didn’t get it, as I was heading away for a friend’s wedding the next day for a weekend. So I took baby #2 away with me with great hopes.
Baby #2, I might add, was a champion the whole weekend. I wasn’t. Halfway through the reception I bailed home to feed the baby, only to realise I wasn’t feeling terrible because I ate too much lunch. And out came that lunch. For the next 7 hours. Halfway in between all that I had to feed #2 again, all while trying to hold down the hiccups. I texted my partner-in-crime who was at home with #1, and told him I was down with the sickness.
When I got home the next day, he admitted that not half an hour after my text and his condolences in return, he too had the hiccup and was out for 7 hours. What a pair we made! Lucky the baby had escaped, and kid #1 was bouncing back, but my partner and I looked like the grim reaper had come for our stomach linings.
My dad had come over to help my partner while he recovered, and it was incredibly relieving to have another parent there parent us while we tried to get over the 7-hour vomitorious mess that kid #1 had blessed us with.
Nobody likes being sick. But being sick with kids makes you really appreciate the times you got sick while you were single and could crawl into your bed-cave and hide from the world. With kids, you just don’t have that choice.