When Your Kiddo Is Sick

I remember being sick as a kid.  It wasn't fun the first few days but got better once I could eat regular food again.  Sore throats were better because I would eat ice creams and popsicles all the time.  If I was very sick, Mom or Dad would stay home with me.  More often it was Mom.  I got to watch TV in my room a couple times.  It was both horrible and awesome at the same time.  

There were two exceptions and they both happened around the same time.  I had horrible appendicitis when I was five and ended up in the hospital for a week.  I remember throwing up constantly and curling up in a ball on the floor so the pain would stop.  I actually had to have surgery.  My dad hid a cheeseburger from McDonalds in his pocket so I could have it.  The fried chicken at the hospital was the best thing I'd ever tasted because I hadn't eaten in a week.  I ended up with a horrible case of Chicken Pox a couple days after I got home from the hospital.  I've never itched so badly in my entire life and I had stitches.  I couldn't scratch my belly because of those stitches.  That was not fun.

2.0 got sick today.  Seemingly out of nowhere he brought back up lunch in the back of Meemaw's visit.  I was in shock and couldn't move because I just didn't believe that my son was doing that.  When he got sick again later, I just held him even though my clothes were covered by the whole episode.  My poor little boy.  I would've done anything to take the illness for him.  Watching him roll over in his sleep and whimper a little bit because his poor tummy hurt broke my heart.

When I found out I was pregnant, I thought about what I would do when that precious baby I was carrying would get sick.  I don't handle throw up very well and extremely smelly runny poop is rather gross.  How would I clean up something like that without losing it myself?  

Then 2.0 was born.  Everything after that changed.  Nothing that came out of his body was gross to me.  Okay it's gross, but it didn't matter.  He's my son.  I cradle him as he's sick and I dry his tears with the clean hem of my shirt.  I whip off dirty pants and clean a raw bottom gently with wipes before putting him in the tub.  I gladly get up to change his sheets over and over and over again before sitting with him in the rocking chair while he's sick.  I do anything I can to make him more comfortable.

That's why my mom let me have the TV in my room those couple times.  That's why one of my parents would stay home with me if I was sick.  I now understand where my mom found the strength to sit next to my bed every single night I was in the hospital, even when she thought she didn't have anymore left to give and I understand why my dad brought me that cheeseburger.

When you become a parent, nothing else matters.  You'll gladly clean avocado puke off of a stroller when you've been just as sick if not sicker than your child because that's what parents do.  You'll find a way to make it better.  I'm praying for the strength to make it better tonight even though I'm going to wiped out.  That's what I do.