I thought she was coughing.
I woke up and heard Ashley, but when I walked into her room, I saw it wasn't coughing, it was throwing up.
My kids have thrown up so few times in their little lives, I think it might be twice. I have girlfriends who have the whole routine down pat, putting out blankets and sheets and towels, their little ones throw up often during cold and flu season.
Girlfriends.
Since I didn't have any knowledge about what the right things were to do, I called my girlfriend on her cell, at 7:30 in the morning. She answered. This is the great thing about having awesome, helpful, caring, understanding girlfriends. They answer the cell phone at 7:30 in the morning, even when they are tending to their own brood and heading out the door to work, to answer your questions about barfing and ginger ale.
Neighbors.
When you live in a new town, and your nearest family members are thousands of miles away, you will forever be grateful to the lovely senior citizen neighbors who were home on a Monday morning, and offered help, and drove to the grocery store upon request, and delivered popsicles to your door in a matter of minutes.
Oh, my baby girl. How I hate hate hate seeing you sick. I don't want my blog posts of late to all sound like life events are only happening to me, woe is me, I'm so different, any of that.... not at all. I know we all go through universal experiences. I think the ones lately that have thrown me are those I haven't experienced before. Like moving to a new unknown state (both literally and figuratively?) with young children. And like watching my youngest throw up, when I haven't before.
She couldn't keep anything down. I spoke with the pediatric nurse. She told me to watch urine output, that if my daughter were to go 12 hours without peeing she should go to the hospital for hydration. Fortunately after the morning, she was keeping down sips of water. And then at night two saltine crackers and Gatorade.
During the day, my tendency to worry arose. I can't help but think that other mothers' brains tell them "This is the flu. This is normal. This will pass easily. This is cold and flu season." My brain, however, worries and frets and fears, and jumps to things like "What if?!" I think my worry is added to by the fact that Ashley has several times experienced a dizzy sensation. When we saw a pediatric neurologist, she came up with what I believe is the answer: these events usually happened either during an illness, or during summer, and both situations could be when Ashley was dehydrated. Yesterday during her throwing up and not being able to keep down even sips of ginger ale, or little bit of popsicle, she felt dizzy. Fortunately the sips of just-water stayed down the rest of the afternoon. The dizzy episode added to my worry.
Here I am the next morning. She is sleeping, she slept through the night. Her head and body felt warm/hot yesterday, so I am assuming a flu bug. The pediatric nurse said they are seeing a lot of this going around. My girlfriend in Arizona told me she knows a mom and a 4 month old who are sick with it right now. Somehow hearing that other people are dealing with it also makes me feel more calm. And then that feels odd, to feel comforted by others being sick also? Sigh. I overthink. And then I overworry. And then I overfear.
We will see how she is today. I will continue to wash loads of sicked-on items. My husband is now home with a headache, I hope he is not getting sick too. But him being home means I won't have to drag the sick child out in the car with me to take the other child to school, as I had to do yesterday, resulting in sick child getting sick in the car.
March sucks.
Spring, hurry up.
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