Sick Day

My son is asleep now, after registering a temperature of 103.2F this evening. He's wearing only his Elmo-decorated diaper (as per the hospital's helpline nurse's instructions) but he's wrapped in a thin cotton blanket (for comfort) that was his uncle's. He's up against the side rails (another one of his comfort things) and occasionally snores lightly. The sweetness of him squeezes my heart almost to the point of popping.

How very normal.

After the roller coaster of my first pregnancy, the horrifying loss of my first child, the next short but tumultuous pregnancy filled with alternating emissions of vomit and shit and blood, the most anxiety-filled nine months of my life that were the next pregnancy followed by my living son's early respiratory problems and then his failure to thrive because I wasn't able to produce enough milk - after all of it, I never expected any kind of normalcy, any run-of-the-mill infant bugs. I wasn't prepared to be the mother of a normal, living child.

And I've had it pretty easy. My son has had a cold or two, but otherwise he's cut me plenty of slack. I've appreciated it, too - it's given me plenty of time and space to deal with the bewilderment I feel daily that I'm his mother. To quote Joey Lawrence circa "Blossom", WHOA! It's also spared me the loathsome task of taking his temperature rectally. It's some cruel trick of nature that the best place for getting a reading on the human body is up the cornhole. The couple of times that his temperature has been taken previously have fallen either to my mom, bless her heart, or a nurse. Left to my own devices, I rely on the little forehead stick-on strip to give me a ballpark figure.

This afternoon at the grocery store, my husband noticed that his head was warm, and by the time we got home, he was clearly burning up. My mom wasn't around, and the forehead strip instantly lit up on the high end of the rainbow spectrum, so I sucked it up and took the rectal reading (which bothered the boy not at all) and found myself dealing with a typical childhood illness. I did the rundown with the aforementioned helpline nurse while my husband cuddled our son, and we did the infant fever reducing meds/electrolyte replacer/mild bath routine. We'll see how the night goes, but we'll almost certainly cancel his regular appointment with his great-grandma tomorrow so as not to expose his second cousin who'll be there to whatever he has. For reasons I'll discuss another time, tomorrow is the last day I should be taking a sick day, and my husband hasn't called in sick yet, so he'll be staying home with him.

We were due for it to happen. Our son was eight months old today and this is the first time we've had an illness. In this, we are so lucky. And we can handle it. This is the kind of thing we'll survive.

Time to take another temperature. Wish me luck.