the "joys" of motherhood

the past two months have been filled with sickness, travelling, and travelling with sickness. after a few weeks of that, nash's sleeping habits were out the window. sleeping through the night was out of the question and sleeping with mommy was his method of choice (not cool). well, last week after all the random bugs and viruses seemed to have cleared his system, we decided we were going to get back to our sleeping ways. it took about two nights of letting nash "cry it out" and then we were in clear. so we thought...

last night (might i mention that last night i had decided to finally go to bed early and get some good sleep) my sister em, called and said she'd been in a car accident. no more sleep. so we waited up for her to return from the excitement. she did, and after sharing her story we all went to bed, em sleeping in nash's room on his extra bed. just as sleep hit me, nash began to cry intermittently. after about an hour of it i flew out of bed to yell at him and when i opened his bedroom door was hit with a cloud of stench. how emilie was sleeping through all of this i'll never know: puke everywhere, diaper filled with poo, nash screaming. i quickly stripped off the bedding and pj's, changed the diaper, rinsed the binki, and sent nash back off to a clean, but mostly vinyl bed (what was the point of putting on clean sheets?).

again, just as i fell asleep i heard a little cough and then the sound of vomitting. back in i went, changed the pj's, checked the diaper, rinsed the binki and got a new blanket. an hour later, it struck again. at this point emilie and i were laughing pretty hard at nash's poor pathetic face as he dry-heaved until he got something out, face bright red. luckily the volume of puke was decreasing with each episode, so i figured it might be safe to hold him. we took our bed together in the recliner and i draped myself in a thick flannel blanket as my shield and armed myself with a roll of paper towels and package of baby wipes. anyway, we managed to get a little sleep between the rest of the apporximately six puking episodes and by morning we were pretty wasted.

and that's when the diarrhea set it. so after a diaper change, more new jammies, and an attempt at breakfast nash managed to lay down for a good nap. so did i. here's where it gets good. nash was screaming when he woke up. no doubt starving and thirsty from the long night of spewing. i threw some easy mac in the microwave and gave him a small bottle of milk. then i heard a loud squirt in his pants. and then another. while i let the easy mac cool, i ran into his room to change his diaper. i laid him down and felt a little wetness on my hand, so leaned him forward to see if it was indead diarrhea on my hand. as i did this, the diarrhea poured (AND I MEAN POURED) out of the top of the back of his diaper. all over the carpet. why i didn't use a changing pad is beyond me; the past few diarrheas had been very small and still a little...thicker. i said a few curses and hauled him to the bathroom trying not to touch him more than necessary. i stripped him down over an old towel and threw him in the tub. as i was doing this, i caught a little wiff and my stomach began to turn. i tried to hold it down, but as i was placing him in the clean, bubbly water i puked. right into the tub beside my poor little boy covered from his neck down in poo. a picture would have been too much, but you can imagine it (we have a pink tub to make it all the more ugly). a poo-covered nash, blistered cheeks from all the puke-wiping, and pickles and peaches floating beside him.

needless to say today will be filled with cleaning and laundry. the whole house smells like poop and puke. i love being a mom.

p.s. i'm adding these details now (as in later) because i've realized that they paint a more complete (and funny) picture for those of you who have tried to imagine my experience: my right boob has already started leaking and so nash's cries triggered a leak the size of a silver dollar through my clothes. imagine that coupled with the sounds of "baby macdonald" and it was pretty much a circus over here this morning. that's not "TMI" is it? i mean, all the dudes have abandoned the blogosphere anyway and the rest of us are all moms or will be soon, right?