The Bug

One week and a day ago Beckie was over with the boys. We were making English Muffin pizzas for their lunch and I was chopping up some garlic. I told her I was trying to get used to eating raw garlic, that I'd read about people eating whole cloves of it to prevent sickness and thought I was going to make it my new sickness prevention. She questioned whether or not eating garlic raw could really keep you from getting sick. I told her that I figured it couldn't hurt and that for a person like me who rarely gets sick, it could make the difference between getting a cold and not getting a cold. Then I went and did it, I bragged - "Besides Jacob's strep throat, none of us has been really sick this year."

That exact moment is probably when the stomach bug germs started attacking my system. It took them only about three hours...and then I puked. I puked so bad there was no holding it back like I normally would. I hate puking, I hate it with a vengeance. I spent the next six hours dry-heaving air, and I'm pretty sure at least one lung. I am such a chicken about throwing up, and since I've never really had the stomach bug like that before, I really thought it might never end. I actually called my mom at 12:30am in an absolute delirium and begged her to take me to the emergency room.

Because it was so bad and there was no one around to help me (I'll get to that) I had nothing to do but stare at the clock and pray that no more puking happened. Because of this I remember the exact time of the last puking. It was 1:20am. I laid on the bathroom floor for a few minutes gathering the strength to (literally) craw back to bed, and then got back into bed just in time to hear Jacob hurl downstairs. That was 1:28am. I didn't throw up after that.

I took me a few days to recover enough from the puking to even get out of bed. So in the aftermath I learned Zach's side of the story. He was basically no where to be found when I was puking, chicken that he was going to get sick from me if he got too close. Basically what he did for me was keep the kids out of the way. The first three times I threw up was when I started to nurse Sabine. Isn't that funny, other people have said that too, that nursing would trigger the puking...must be something hormonal.

Anyway, I digress. So I'm upstairs puking and Zach was on the couch with the Sabine, who'd finally fallen asleep and Jacob, who stayed awake well past Zach, and helped himself to all kinds of things in the fridge, which he later puked up. When I was upstairs throwing up, Zach was down there hearing me but not really caring. Later, when it got really bad, I actually tried calling him a few times because I needed things I couldn't get, on account of the fact that I couldn't walk and couldn't move my head around lest if launched itself right off of my neck. The problem with calling him was that if I tried to yell downstairs it made my throat muscles move too much and that led to more puking. So he couldn't hear me calling him. The one time he did hear me, both kids were asleep on top of him and his response was, "I can't get up, both kids are asleep on me." Big f-ing deal, welcome to my friggin life. So that's how I got to calling my mom past midnight, because no one in this house even cared to check on me.

So it turns out that before Jacob had fallen asleep he (Jacob, not Zach) came upstairs to check on me and found me laying on the bathroom floor. He came downstairs and told Zach where I was and that he couldn't wake me. Zach said, "Yeah Jacob, Mommy probably wants to stay close to the toilet right now." And that's it. Now I don't remember Jacob coming upstairs like that so chances are I probably was passed out, which I think was highly likely in the minutes following a good puking. I made it through and I'm fine now, but here's the thing: You five year old tells you that his mother is laying on the floor, unresponsive, and you say 'that's ok', you don't GO CHECK ON HER?

Husbands.

Anyway, I'm just a little bitter. I've been spending the rest of the week in this pit of resentment because I'm the mother and EVERYTHING is my job. And if I get help from the father of my children it's because he's doing me a FAVOR. I've just been wanting a little time to myself so I could sit down and type out some of my thoughts and apparently that's too much to ask. Just now, in fact, I had to get up and go take care of Jacob because Zach is holding the baby. It's not like I ever do anything else while I'm holding the baby. Even though it's now past midnight, I'm still not off duty. We actually already went to bed, and I got up so that I could have some alone time, but that doesn't even work. There's no alone time in this house anymore. The baby does not sleep. She's always awake and if she's awake that means I have to be in her direct line of vision. That's if she's in a good mood. If she's in a bad mood then I have to be holding her. And it has to be me, there are no substitutes. I'm tired and cranky and I need a break.