Flu season blues

Ugh, flu season hit at our house last week - BIG time. Braeden woke up last Wednesday night and proceeded to vomit everywhere. I stayed up with him for the rest of the night, grabbing my flashlight and directing him toward the bucket whenever I felt him getting ready to start up again. (As night turned into morning and exhaustion set in, I abandoned the bucket in favor of any relatively dry surface: a towel, the sheets, my arm.) What I originally thought was the product of too much daytime activity and too little sleep turned out to most definitely be a stomach virus. Braeden couldn't hold anything down, and after he bravely tried to stomach pear juice, water, and a popsicle, he gave up and just went back to nursing. This was fine with me, of course, until the evening that Braeden started to feel better... which is exactly when the flu decided to hit me.
With Braeden feeling more energetic and me feeling, well, like I was ready to sleep with my head resting on the toilet seat, Joe swooped in like Superhubby. Friday night, the two of them went out to the grocery store and came home with a card and ginger ale for me. When Braeden wouldn't nurse to sleep, Joe put him in the car and drove around until Braeden fell asleep. I woke up in the middle of the night to see a peacefully sleeping babe next to me. (Of course, he wasn't quite so peaceful after waking up to the sound of me, retching.) Saturday morning, they were gone again, off to the park and out to lunch. We all napped together, then Joe brought Braeden back out to the mall. I felt a bit guilty during this last outing, because I was pretty much better by then. (As penance, I did some laundry and straightened up around the house... and then spent the next two days taking Braeden out because Joe got the flu, too!)

After the storm had passed, out house was in shambles and I had about 10 loads of laundry heaped up on "Braeden's" bed, waiting to be folded. We had no food in the house, which was fine with me, because all I wanted to do was order takeout and drive through Starbucks from then on. I still can't get over how quickly a stomach bug had moved me into "survival mode," absolutely obliterating any inclination I had to do things the "right" way. I switched Braeden into paper diapers, turned on the TV (yes, the TV! Not just YouTube!), abandoned my new clothesline, sacked out on the couch watching "The Devil Wears Prada" while Joe ran all over town in his efforts to entertain Braeden, and turned to frozen dinners for a couple of nights even after I was better. At one point, while I was actually still sick, Joe looked at me on the couch and said, "I'd love to do what you're doing right now." I looked over at him like he was crazy-- masochistic, even. (Granted, at that moment I was giving serious consideration to heading to the hospital for an IV of saline and Phenergan.)

Joe had a good point, though. I had to admit that it felt kind of nice to be able to veg out for a day-- usually, when one of us is home alone for a few hours, we feel this parental (or is it marital?) obligation to do a load of laundry, vacuum the floors, pay some bills, or at the very least prep dinner. We have become pretty type-A in our quest to be the best parents possible to our son, so much so that the only quiet relaxation time we can expect in a day is when we sit down and read to Braeden. Calm, yes; enjoyable, yes; but not exactly "me time."

So now our normal, healthy lives have resumed: Braeden's back in his Fuzzibuns, the TV is off, and we had wild salmon and fresh asparagus for dinner tonight. Okay, I still haven't transitioned back to the clothesline, which amazingly survived the huge storms that hit Killeen earlier this week. But Joe and I have decided that we should take more opportunities to give each other "me time"-- so that we can occasionally sack out on the couch and watch a movie without a bucket nearby. (And --shhh-- I'm also making sure that Braeden and I wash our hands more often. I know that crunchy parents like me aren't supposed to be germophobes, but one bad stomach flu is enough to make me want to buy stock in Purell!)