Germaphobe

Can I just say that I am SO F-ING DONE with flu season!!!?!!  BAHHHHH.

I have this anxiety issue when it comes to infectious stomach bugs.  I've always been totally paranoid about getting sick.  Well someone should have warned me that paranoid feeling would grow exponentially when I became a mom.

Last year the baby was still fairly small, and I was still on maternity leave, so it was easier.  When there was a lot of illness in the community I kept him home.  Safe and protected in our vomit-free home.  Well now that he's in daycare I'm faced with daily anxiety about what communicable disease he's going to come home with next.  It's not like I can hose him down in Lysol (although the thought has occurred to me).

I've come to terms with the fact that he's going to have lots of colds (in fact he's had 4 or 5 already just in the 6 weeks that he's been going to daycare).  But these stomach flu-type illnesses are a whole other story.  It just freaks me out.  I can't really explain it.  I just have this totally irrational anxiety about it.  (Yes, I'm a nurse.  Other people are allowed to be sick - just not me or my family.  Don't judge.)

He's only been sick with one of these bugs once - about 3 weeks ago it went around the daycare.  I was almost relieved when he finally did get sick because it was like I could stop worrying about it.  And luckily he had a really mild case so it wasn't the catastrophic puke-and-poop fest I had envisioned.

Well today I go to pick him up at daycare and hear about how a couple of the kids have been sick with vomiting and diarrhea, and this feeling of anxiety and dread washes over me.  NOT AGAIN!  I hate this.

I wish I could just keep him home and prevent him from being exposed to all this crap.  And I don't wanna hear about how "it's good for his immune system" or how "if he's sick a lot now he'll be healthier later" because it really doesn't make me feel any better.  I'm still a bundle of nerves waiting for the barf-bomb to hit.

I CAN'T WAIT for this part to be over.

Boobie blues?

Well I guess I should begin by apologizing for the negativity of my last post.  But in my defense, I started this blog as a sounding board for the part of me that sometimes needs to rant.  Because if I don't, things get ugly.

So for all you folks out there who maybe don't want to read about hormones and female problems, I'll take this opportunity to suggest you skip this particular post.

Is there any one else out there that found their hormones forced them onto an emotional roller coaster when they were weaning??  I wasn't anticipating this.  It's kind of like the way I felt with postpartum blues, only I don't have the excuse of the blues to explain my complete lack of mental stability.  It's worse this week, because I'm about to get my period to boot.  Usually I just feel irritable though, not so....emotional. 

I can't stop crying.  About everything.  And I feel really anxious and worried about things, like in an irrational way.  And I'm grouchy.  I feel a little crazy.

Everyone tells me that I should give myself a break because I just started back to work and have a lot on my plate and all that, but I honestly don't think this has anything to do with being back at work.  In fact, I feel better when I'm at work because I'm busy.

Anyway, just wondering if this is something other people have experienced?  I'm still nursing a couple times a day, so we haven't completely weaned yet, and I'm worried this will get worse when we do.

On a completely unrelated note, I don't seem to have much time left for blogging with everything else that's going on these days, so I'm a little concerned about the future of this journal.  We shall see.

No sleep makes mommy something something...

Four.  Thirty.

AM

That's what time I've been up every morning this week.  Why. Won't. This. Child. Sleep?  At night?  By 8:30am he's ready for a 2 hour nap.  And another leisurely siesta after lunch.  But at night he's up like every hour or 2, and then is up for good at four flippin' thirty.  Rearing to go.  Ready to play.  Why? 

A friend of mine just updated her Facebook status to say, "So thankful for a child who sleeps well, I got up at 9 and she's still sleeping :)" (You know who you are...).  I'm sooo jealous.  No, jealous doesn't cover it - I'm desperate.  I would do anything for that kind of sleep.

Also, I think maybe I'm a little psychotic with sleep deprivation.  Like I keep thinking I see things out of the corner of my eye, and then there's nothing there.  I've experienced this before when I've been exhausted from working nights, so I know I not going completely off my rocker, but still...it's a little disturbing.

The other night around 3am I held the baby in the darkness of his room, waiting for him to be enough asleep that I could slip him back into his crib without waking him.  As I stared at his little face in the darkness, it started to look...well, not right.  Kinda distorted.  I couldn't quite put my finger on what was wrong, so I start inspecting his features, finally deciding that it was his lip that didn't look right.  His upper lip.  It looked all puffy and lumpy and swollen like he was having an allergic reaction or something.  I poked it...and it felt puffy too.  So I start tilting him this way and that, trying to get the nightlight to shine on his face better so I can get a better look, starting to get a little panicky that there's something terribly wrong.  Something definitely didn't look right.  I finally dashed over to the light switch and flipped it on - just to find his face and lips just as I had left them at bedtime.  Perfect.  No puffy lumps.  Just perfect little baby lips.

I'm losing my mind. 

Naturally the journey to the light switch disturbed him enough that we had to start over with going back to sleep, and I ultimately robbed myself needlessly of 15 minutes of sweet, luxurious slumber.  Rats.

What next?

I sometimes wish my worrying mind had an off button.

I took my son for his one-year check up today.  We happily strolled into the office, no concerns.  Until the doctor looks into my son's ears (as we held the poor screaming child down) and informs me that he has an ear infection.  Quite common, I realize, but what concerns me is that I have no idea how long the poor child has had it.  He seems the same as any other day.  Also, as my son squirms on the table to get away from this strange man's probing hands, the doctor informs me that he "can't find" his right testicle.  That it must have "slipped back up", but that I should make sure I can "find it" later.  Right.  No problem doc. 

So we get a script for an antibiotic and are sent on our way.  No biggie right?  Well not quite.  Now I have to worry about my son getting an antibiotic for the first time and having an allergic reaction.  Or experiencing side-effects like diarrhea or thrush.  Or that I won't be able to find his poor hiding testicle and it will be lost forever. 

So I spend the afternoon on the computer researching which drug reactions to watch for and what to do about them, and where to find missing testicles.  And deciding if I should give him probiotics to prevent the diarrhea and thrush.  And what if he's in pain but isn't showing it?  Should I give him something for that?  And what should I take for the ulcer that is now burning it's way through my stomach lining?

As far as I knew this morning, he wasn't even sick.  How, exactly, did I end up here?  In my dark, sick, anxiety-laden worrying place?  (I don't like it here.  I want to go home...).

Believe it or not folks, I'm a nurse.  That's right - the one y'all count on to look after sick loved ones.  So why is it that when my loved ones are sick my ability to cope (or even think rationally) plummets?  Intellectually I know that I can handle whatever illness or emergency the kid will likely throw at me in his lifetime.  So why can't I just relax and deal with the problems as they arise?  Why must I torture myself with the what-ifs? 

Why, oh why can't I be a calm, sane, happy mommy instead of this uptight, neurotic, fearful one?

This will get easier right guys?

*Update*: Just in case you were going to lose sleep over it, I did find his little nut at bathtime, all safe and sound in it's nest.