Because we're still celebrating Bodily Function Week chez nous, I pose a rhetorical question: What's more fun, helping a toddler vomit or having a toddler help you vomit?
Okay, it's not actually rhetorical and I know the answer from personal recent experience. It's WAY more fun to help a toddler vomit than to have a toddler help you vomit. This is because there's no way around the fact that when a toddler is helping you vomit, you're vomiting, and that is horrible.
On Monday I came home from a very brief respite from four days mano-a-mano with Elias (Ben and Isaac on a dad-lad-granddad trip to NYC). I went to a coffee shop and read the NYT for an hour or so, while Elias stayed home with a baby sitter. When I came back, he was dressed in different clothes than I had left him in and slumped asleep on the couch. The babysitter said he had been sick… Hm. This was my first inkling that anything was amiss. I thought and hoped that perhaps he got something like a cracker down the wrong way and it made him hork up a little bit, as sometimes happens. But as the day wore on, indeed it proved to be the stomach flu. He threw up all day. He could not keep down even breastmilk (although he insisted on nursing as much as possible) and water. Indeed, these simple things flew from him with great force.
But oddly through it all he retained his good humor. I remember one moment when he was simultaneously carrying me books to read to him AND throwing up as happy as you please. He threw up on three beds and many towels, sheets, clothes, etc., etc. Laundry! Oh, the heaps of it. He never gave warning and just went about his day occasionally spewing. I followed him like white on rice, carrying paper towels and other catching devices, and still he managed to elude me many times. I hovered over him for fear of dehydration. But over the next 12-14 hours it faded out, until by Mid-Tuesday he was keeping down simple things and seemed quite well.
Wednesday morning dawned well before dawn as it usually does. I opened my eyes with a single word: Uh-oh. Something was not right. Moments later I was in the thick of it myself. Ben had not left for work yet and I truly BEGGED him not to go. Don't leave me with two children while I cannot raise my head!! But he had been out of town and had an important meeting. He got on the phone and did some rearranging, pushed his meeting back a bit so he could take Isaac to school, and canceled his afternoon so he could come back and help me. I appreciated this. I understood that it was the best he could do. And yet, it still left me alone with a toddler for four hours when I was sicker than I've been since– when? I was trying to recall it. I think this illness was along the lines of the great salmonella ordeal of 1987, when I was in Kenya and which a few of my readers my remember being privvy to. THAT was worse. THIS was right up there.
My misery really scared Elias. I remember lying on the bathroom floor with my trusty bucket, and Elias patting my head. I remember him crying and screaming as I vomited– and pulling my hair in apparent effort to get me to stop– he was so alarmed by it! I was so miserable and it was very hard to reassure him that I wasn't actually dying. I had my doubts myself there for a while. I got on a schedule, vomiting every two hours: 6 a.m., 8, 10.. Ben came home and I stumbled upstairs to deal with it alone. MUCH easier! The vibration of baby DVDs and being climbed on between bouts was not helping. Nor the imperative to stay conscious to keep the baby from eating poison, falling from great heights, etc. Once Ben got back I was able to curl up. By then I was of course completely empty, and still the violent hatred coming from within… wow.
But after my 2 p.m. vomit, things began to abate. Ben brought me some ginger ale and I took a tiny sip, thinking that perhaps I could absorb some before hurling the rest out. I slept a while. I sipped a little more. Gradually I sensed that it was over. I was left a shadow of my former self, leached of color, sore and exhausted, but… done. Only 12 hours! Less!
I give a shout out to my friends who have dealt with hyperemesis gravidarum , severe morning sickness, who went through this very thing for MONTHS!! How did you do it, ladies?? My god, I barely survived half a day.
Thursday was a fog, but I did my normal things, took Isaac to school and spent time with Elias. I progressed through the jello and crackers stage until Thursday evening, when Ben I have a standing date night. I felt very weak and tired, but decided to go anyway. Miso soup and bits of bland chicken helped much to restore my strength. Yesterday I felt normal and went on with my life.
Ben and Isaac have so far been spared. I hold out hope that it was something that Elias and I were exposed to over the four-day weekend and that they just won't get it. But I'm watching Isaac closely. Last night he claimed to have a tummy ache and I steeled myself for a night of misery. But nothing came of it. He seems fine and is off at "swimming school" right now.
And so, I hope that this closes this installment of Bodily Functions week, and that we won't have to celebrate it any time again, for years to come!