Sick of being sick
"Relentless"
When I was in high school I had a friend who wanted to be a mummy more than anything else in the world. She ended up getting married before I'd had my first beer, and having 4 children in quick succession very shortly afterwards. I remember one of her motherhood anecdotes was that one day as she was changing her first born's nappy while pregnant with baby number 2, she had such bad morning sickness that she leaned to one side of her presumably wailing child and threw up so violently that she broke a rib. Seriously? I thought. And people have children voluntarily??
Thankfully, I hardly had any morning sickness when pregnant with Pickle. And, apart from her being very colicky and not sleeping for the first few months, she was a very healthy baby. without any sickness at all. A lot of my other mum friends would bemoan the fact that their babies had reflux or thrush or a UTI, and I would nod sympathetically and keep quiet. Because Pickle got nothing. Even to the point where I was slightly worried that because she'd been so healthy for so long, something big and bad was coming, much like when Japan hasn't had an earthquake in a few decades. They know the Big One is just around the corner.
But, just like her sleep, which, after settled at about 8 months, she kept on being very, very healthy and not getting any illnesses at all. Not even a cold.
Until. Nursery.
I am a pretty healthy person. I never get what's going around. I have about one cold every three years and it only lasts for a day or two. When I taught English in South Korea, I wanted a break from teaching so badly (I really didn't like my job) that I tried, without success, to get sick. My boyfriend at the time had swine flu, and I purposefully hung around him more than usual and slept at his house a lot when he was at his sickest to try and contract the virus. I think I probably kissed him a whole lot more than I usually did too. So irresponsible, although I don't think he minded too much. (I pretended this surprisingly over-affectionate episode was because I wanted to take care of him through his illness, which isn't a complete lie) It didn't work. I walked out of there healthier than I'd ever been. I guess you could say that I have quite a healthy constitution.
Until. NURSERY.
Oh my good god. Where do I start. Since Pickle started nursery, over a year ago, I don't think there has been an entire week in this house where someone hasn't been ill. Look, I won't bore you with all the ailments we've had, because although I myself find it fascinating to talk about, it doesn't exactly make for riveting reading, but suffice to say it's been every temporary physical illness you can think of and quite a few mental ones too. When babies are born, they all have something called "Passive immunity" which we pass onto them through antibodies in the placenta - it just means that they are immune to horrid bacteria and viruses when they are on the outside. Passive immunity means they have not made the immune system themselves. However, when the magic immunity wears off, a little like the time sensitive invincibility star in Mario World, babies are given the label "immunologically naive".
My friend made an interesting observation the other day. She said that when our kids get sick, they get kid-sized illnesses. Small sniffles. Little lurgy. Baby bronchitis. Tiny tuberculosis. But when you catch it (and believe me, you WILL catch it) you get an adult sized version of it. Pickle got a vomiting bug on the weekend (standard) and the next day she was bouncing around like she'd won the lottery. I got it that day, and had I had the strength to, I would have gotten down on my knees and begged the Lord to take me away and rid me of this my wretched, broken, failed shell of a body. I'm kind of glad He didn't, because I did get better eventually, and I kind of like being alive.
Pickle has "reactive airways" which seems to me to be a code phrase doctors have invented to mean "She's probably got asthma, but we aren't allowed to tell you that until she's 3 and plus we don't know for sure...but we have to say something because parents love labels and you probably won't leave us alone until we do, so let's use this fancy and non panic-inducing phrase we've just made up" Her "reactive airways" had me almost calling A&E one night recently as she coughed so continuously and violently throughout the night that she threw up and kept throwing up whilst coughing and for a few seconds that felt like hours she stopped breathing as she choked on her vomit. I've never been so scared. My partner was amazingly calm and comforting and rightly commented that if we panic, she will pick up on it and it will make it worse. We got through the night but more importantly, she got through the night. She got better, slowly.
What's your point AnnaLouise? Oh right. I had a point other than to relate that fairly traumatic story. I've just recovered from a non-Covid cough that lasted three weeks. Apparently an acute cough can take up to 25 days to recover from. Who the hell has that kind of time??? I'm fairly sure it was partially something that Pickle's good old reactive airways picked up and passed onto mummy, but it was just as violent and constant as the one she had a few months ago. When I say violent, I mean that I couldn't breathe whilst the coughing attacks were happening, and I peed my pants a little every time I coughed. I was going through around 10 pairs of pants a day before I finally succumbed to Tena Lady pads. I was envious of those nappies Pickle gets to wear.
Unsolicited advice segment: Pregnant ladies! Do your pelvic floor exercises, I beg you. I now bitterly regret that I did not do them each day I was pregnant. Had I known that this was how my body would manifest having weak pelvic floor muscles, I would have taken time off work just to do them every second of every day. Peeing your pants whenever you cough violently or throw up is the most humiliating and depressing thing I've ever gone through. Don't let it happen to you!
So I am assuming, like everything else about this whole having a child malarky, that we will be continuously stalked and ambushed by malicious bacteria armies and guerilla virus gangs for a few years, if not decades. But, according to a few blogs I looked at (because as we all know, blogs are always the best source for empirical truth and water tight facts) there is good news. Children who have been in nurseries and attend school are less vulnerable to colds and coughs than those children who did not go to nursery. Well, thank God for that. There's your silver lining, even if you are on your 11th pair of pants today.
And, at the risk of making you want to throw up all over again, in a way, I embrace these germs, because they are produced by the cutest, sweetest, cuddliest, funniest, most gorgeously perfect little germ factory I know.
Thanks for reading x
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