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recovery: a postscript

a pretty face to go with a yukky story.

it's 11 after minute and i'm awake. not for any bad reason you might suspect: i'm actually still feeling great. still haven't needed and pain meds. i think i just slept so much all day (and then had too much oh-so-delicious iced tea ... with caffeine) that i'm just now starting to fade to black for the night.

and if you have a weak stomach (nothing gory about my surgery - just a lovely child vomit story) you can stop reading right now, know we're all ok, and have a fabulous night.

anyone still here?

ok. so john is on a lot of medicine right now for his hand. well, not a LOT, but he does have to take two daily doses of antibiotics plus several doses a day of benadryl. and he's actually a great medicine taker, typically, even of the yukky ones. he just sips them down out of the little syringe, sometimes with a grimace, but no major problems.

but. tonight, we made a strategic error. he took a cool bath tonight, to substitute for a cool compress on his hand (have you ever tried to put a cool compress on an active two-year-old's hand? good luck with that). after the bath, we brushed teeth and went to the bedroom. just before daddy left the room, i realized john hadn't taken his medicines yet. so daddy went and got the antibiotic first, and although john doesn't like that one much he took it like a champ. then the benadryl, which he usually likes more - he told me it was "delicious" the first time he took it. and he said it was yukky. he didn't want it it. he fought it. and finally i squirted it in his mouth ... too fast. and he gagged. and got mad at me. but then he took a sip of milk and sat down, and daddy said goodnight and turned off the lights and went to the living room while john curled up on my lap for our night night routine. all was forgiven.

then john looked at me, gagged, and puked all over me.

historically, i am a self-described pukophobe. but what are you going to do? it's your child. in the dark, i knew i couldn't get up or try to clean up because 1) i'm not really supposed to be picking john up a bunch right now anyway and 2) i couldn't assess the damage and make sure i wasn't going to make it worse. so i yelled for daddy, who came, turned the lights on, and took the very messy child wrapped in a towel that just happened to be on hand to go back for bath round two. (and kudos to daddy, because although motherhood and dog parenthood has about beaten the pukophobia out of me, daddy's still pretty sensitive to it. but he did what had to be done.)

cleaning up mommy was ... a little harder of a task. fortunately, i'd shielded the furniture and contained the mess primarily to my person. so i stripped down, actually jumped in the bath with john to clean us both up a bit, dried off, started a load of wash, put john in a fresh diaper (after some sips of water and some time to assess that he was just fine now, thank you). and we returned to the bedroom to start night night over again. 

john kept apologizing to me. he said, "your shirt messy, mommy? i burp. i sick on mommy's shirt. i sorry mommy." i guess the good news is that the largest trauma of the situation, to john at least, was that he felt bad about getting mommy's clothes messy. i assured him that it was not his fault, that everything was ok, and that we love him very much and are very proud of what an awesome boy he was today.

for mommy, now, the trauma was a little longer lasting. it took a long hot shower with some very nice smelling soaps and shampoos to rinse the smell off of me and out of my nose ... and i guess there's still SOME pukophobe left in me, 'cause it took a few more saltines to re-settle my own stomach. but i've crossed a parental milestone of sorts, that i was terrified i wouldn't fare so well. i've been puked on. and i survived.

so really, john's mom and john's dad weathered this parental "emergency" pretty darn well. and considering i'm still technically recovering from surgery less than 24 hours ago ... i'm pretty damn proud of us.

::fade to black::
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