Mother of the Year, Over Here

Stop competing.

I’ve won it.

Mother of the Year.

Elle woke up with a cough Saturday morning. She was going to a birthday party with my Mom while I worked at a women’s expo (that’s a WHOLE other post). I put the cough medicine in Elle’s go-bag and it didn’t get used that day.

Sunday the cough was still around.

And sleep was not the greatest during this time frame.

Monday morning, she woke up with the cough even worse. I called Jon’s parents (remember, mine are sipping pina coladas on a beach somewhere on an island) and they watched Elle. I didn’t want to send her to school with no chance to feel better, a bunch of other sick kids running around.

They kept her well-medicated, put the humidifier in her room at their house and paid good attention to the cough.

It didn’t seem like it was getting better.

Same thing happens Tuesday morning.

And finally, this morning, I take her to their house again and on the way to work call the pediatrician’s office. I tell them that she has a cough, has had it for a few days but didn’t know if maybe the doctor could tell us over the phone a good medicine or if we should come in.

Oh, come in – they say.

So, I go to work, do the morning routine, and head back to get Elle and go to the doctor’s office.

(Sidenote: two molars popped through in the last five days as well. Medical professionals can swear this has nothing to do with anything…but…I don’t believe them).

We don’t wait at ALL in the waiting room and we’re in the room waiting for the doctor. The nurse-girl takes Elle’s temperature (99.5, slight temp still) and weighs her (22 pounds!). He arrives and listens to her (he always calls her Ellie — and calls me by what will be my married name…and I just let him) chest and breathing. He calls for the RSV test. Swab of the nose, nebulizer treatment and five minutes later aaaaannnndddd…it’s RSV.

Awesome.

Annnnnndddddd…it’s an ear infection!

Wait.

What?

How’d I miss an EAR infection?

And then, just for good measure (to really shore up MOTY) I ask about a sore on Elle’s…lady bits…and he indicates it’s from not changing her diaper frequently enough (I’m blaming daycare, but I’m sure it’s not just them). He also points out that her lady bits are quite red and hands me the name of an OTC cream to use to make it less red and uncomfortable for Elle.

Huh?

How’d I miss ALL of that?

While all the cutesy-ness of Elle using signs to communicate is nice, learning words is entertaining and the ways we forge communicating daily are improving, it’ll be nice when she can TELL me her throat/chest/ladybits/ears hurt.

Felt SO bad that I called in and took the rest of the day to spend with her. Can you take a Mom-Guilt day? They should give you some of those at work, to use just for days like this. I’m glad I did. She slept nearly four hours this afternoon, two of them after waking up crabby-patty and letting me just cuddle her (while I watched the movie The Debt with Helen Mirren – I wouldn’t NOT recommend it, but unless you’re looking for a movie you can watch with the sound low (subtitles, yay!) and aren’t looking for anything entirely stimulating, then go ahead and watch this one. It felt good to watch a movie, even if it was out of Mom-Guilt.)

She’s in bed early tonight, considering she slept so long this afternoon.

And I’m still up, contemplating how all of those things got past me.

Either way, she’s on the mend now. The goal is to be healthy enough to contemplate attending a birthday party this weekend, but I’d hate to pass on this Mom-Guilt to anyone else.

I hear it’s contagious.

 

Mommy Confession #1

It’s supposed to be that a mother loves motherhood above all things and her child more than that, even.

And I do.

I find being Elle’s Mom completes me in a way I didn’t expect that it would.

However, I have a confession.

Last night, we were across the street at Rick & Jen’s (Jon’s brother and his gf) having dinner, grilling out and having a bonfire. It was awesome. Perfect laid back Saturday night in which I drank far too much wine. Which could be a confession in itself.

But, here’s the real one.

The fire was beginning to flame, Elle had awoke from what I thought was down-for-the-night sleep and Jon’s Mom and Dad, who’d come over, were taking turns hanging out with her outside, wrapped in a few layers of blankies.

It was getting very dark and very cold.

It was time for Elle to sleep.

My wine glass had about 3 sips left in it.There was more wine to be drunk and the fire was really starting to flame.

Elle becomes extremely irritable and I take her inside to rock her/feed her/soothe her/lay her down, etc. And as I lay there on the living room floor where Elle was dozing off to sleep, I wondered how long I’d been in there. Wondered if anyone missed me at the fire.

So I confess, I wanted to be doing cool shit, like hanging out by the fire, not laying on the floor of Rick & Jen’s living room, hoping against hope that Elle would fall asleep and stay asleep.

I realized in those moments, alone in the quiet of their house, that a mother’s job is to sleep a little less in order to get to do both the ‘cool shit’ and the required Mom stuff. I thought back to growing up, my younger cousins, my aunts disappeared inside the cottage for stretches at a time, and then reappearing to continue sitting by the fire/around the counter/around the table.

Sometimes, you have to hit pause on the cool things you’re doing as a Mom and do the Mom things that aren’t as cool. Because that’s what we sign up for when we take on this whole Motherhood challenge.

I confessed this last night around the fire and I said that people should talk about it being ok to feel this way sometimes, because it IS ok to feel that way sometimes. Jon’s Dad (who I love, btw) said he thought it was ok to feel that way but not to say it out loud. Which convinced me that I was writing it here – because some days, mom friends reading this, there are interludes where you may want to be, you know, sleeping instead of rocking your baby, reading a book instead of making a bottle, enjoying a glass of wine instead of changing a diaper. And that is OK. It is normal. It is healthy. And there’s no need to not do the cool shit — you just have to fit it in around the Mom stuff some times.

The guilt that comes with motherhood is absolutely unparalleled to anything else of which I’m aware. Doesn’t mean that I don’t love being Elle’s Mom and that I don’t love motherhood itself — it simply means that I’m searching for balance and finding it is hard. 🙂