Being Pregnant and Getting Sick Sucks...

I have been bragging, I know I should know better, about how healthy my daughter is. She's my little three year old vegetarian and I've been talking to other Moms about how our vegetarian and healthy living lifestyle means we're almost never sick and how great that is.

So what happened? Daddy got a cold and we were so glad Mommy and our daughter didn't get it. Ha. Nice try. Daddy started to feel better after about three days of ookiness and we all sighed in relief.

Then after only one day of feeling better Daddy had a relapse. This time his cold started off with a fever, not a good sign. Two days later we noticed our daughter wasn't quite herself, light appetite and tired. She woke up crying around 10:30pm with boogies and saying she had to go pee. And you guessed it, as we went to put her on the potty we noticed she was warm. Uh-oh.

We gave her our only dose of children's acetaminophen and tucked her in. The next day she woke up groggy and run down. And her nose started showing signs of stuffiness mid morning just as Daddy started to feel like he had been hit by a freight train...

I hadn't driven in over two months, because the last time I had my weak right hip had hurt so bad I walked funny for three days. We are currently a one car family and it goes to work with Hubbie during the week. On the weekend when I have access to the car we run errands together so this hasn't been a problem.

But here I was, now 8 months pregnant, and it was up to me to take care of my loves. I climbed in the car, laughed at how small that seat felt now that I was so big, and headed to the store in search of more disinfectant spray, children's acetaminophen, c-plus cold tablets and ibuprofen for my aching Hubbie who accidentally left our only bottle on his desk at work the one day he was actually in the office. Oops. Well, now we have two :-)

This went well enough that as they both napped I went and picked up sandwiches at Togo's and vitamin filled smoothies from Robek's for lunch on my second driving adventure in months. It went well, but I did notice that backing up was a challenge because my range of motion is so limited by my current tummy tenants. I certainly felt the stretch in my ribs. :-)

By the time we put her to bed she had even less appetite and Daddy was hacking and coughing. Mommy had a stuffy head and crossed her fingers that that was where it would end.

We both jumped out of bed as we lay watching a movie around 11pm when we heard her cry. Poor kid now had a stuffy and runny nose and woke up sobbing. We snuggled her, helped her blow her nose and, after some snuggles, she actually asked for the purple medicine. Poor kid.

Tucked in with her children's acetaminophen kicking in and her nose blown a little, she slept the rest of the night.

She came groggily into our room when the sun came up the next morning and asked for a movie. Daddy set her up snuggly on the couch with a movie and a cereal bar.

An hour and a half later Mommy was getting up, with a headache and still stuffy but no sign of fever thank goodness. This is when I discovered she hadn't eaten anything that morning. No food, no drink.

I called her in and snuggled her up on my lap, around my huge tummy, and asked what she wanted to eat. Nothing. How about to drink? Nothing.

"I just want my Mommy."

Aww, my poor baby.

I snuggled her up tried to talk her into something, anything from the kitchen. She just wanted hugs. I snuggled her in my lap for half an hour trying to coax her to just take a bite or a sip of something. No interest.

Finally one of us, either her or me, tossed out the idea of some purple medicine. She liked the sound of that. "Okay," I told her. "But first you need to eat some bites and have some sips so you can have the purple medicine."

"Okay Mommy."

Victory!

A few bites of organic blueberry cereal bar and about half a dozen good sips of cold water later she chewed up her reward of purple medicine and settled back against me.

Her interest was peaked at the idea of orange juice and at this point I was willing to go and get anything at the store if I thought she would eat or drink it.

I snuggled her up in a sheet next to Daddy to keep her warm without overheating and left them tucked into bed watching Wallace & Gromit as I climbed in the car and drove for the second day in a row.

I try to be good about picking up just what's on my list, in our family my husband is the better grocery shopper, I tend to be the impulse shopper. We do spend about 1/3 to 2 times as much when he brings our daughter and I along.

Since it was just me, I was trying to behave. But when you family is sick you just want to do everything you can to make things better. Lucky for me the grocery store was having a 72 hour sale, so the extra things I picked up were at least all on sale.

I got organic raspberries and strawberries for my daughter, she's a total berry head and when she's sick the last thing she needs is crap in her food. I found organic dark chocolate peanut butter cups for my Hubby. His favorite thing with less crap again! Yeah!

I also got the ginger root we should have taken days earlier as I was determined not to get it at all. Orange and apple juice in the hopes of getting plenty of fluids into our little miss. I did impulse a few other things, the mustard pretzels from the bulk section were not on sale, but the Annie's strawberry bunny gummies were and I remembered how much she loved them the one time she had them. I was desperate to get good somethings into my daughter.

When I got home with my stash of good stuff she was curled up in our bed watching Scooby-Doo. I was unbelievably excited when she showed interest in the raspberries and quickly poured half the container into a bowl for her. The poor little imp ate a handful of raspberries and promptly passed out, a raspberry still in her hand. She was soooo tired.

After her catnap we started trying to temp her with other treats. All she wanted was Daddy when he got her from her bed (we moved her after she fell asleep to her own bed to finish her rest after she woke up crying and didn't know where she was), until he brought her in where Mommy was. One look at Mommy and all she wanted was Mommy. She snuggled up in my lap in her sheet again to keep her comfy (she's big on nakie time and with her running a fever on and off we weren't going to complain!) and we spent the next hour trying to get her to eat anything. She ate three bites of a cheese stick that sounded good when we suggested it and then was done with it. Same with some cold organic peas, baked snap peas (though she ate more of these than anything) and the orange juice which ended up dumped all over the floor when she took off the lid and didn't tell anybody. Daddy went to pick it up and what she hadn't already spilled taking the lid off dumped all over when the lid came off in Daddy's hand. Poor Daddy.

Did I mention that I had also done laundry (which entails the bending it takes to get it into the basket and get the basket off the floor, followed by carrying it down a flight of stairs around my big belly without tripping and around the building to the laundry room where I get to bend and stand as I load and move the clothes to wash and dry them, whew that's a lot of work!) on Thursday night before my Hubbie got so sick and again during his sickest day on Friday.

So here I was, it was Saturday and I had done more in the last three days, physically, than I had done in the last three months. When you need to, you do what you have to do. That's the way it works. My husband had been working full time, often on projects that take long hours, and then coming home and doing his job and mine for months with all the things I was just not able to do without hurting myself.

So of course, somewhere around Saturday night I went "Whoa, Mama's gotta go lay down." Luckily my hubs was starting to feel better, but my endeavors were catching up to me. Sure enough when he came in to check on me during my rest early evening I had a slight fever. Dang.

So much for dodging the cold completely. Sigh.

Lucky for me since my Hubs was feeling better by the end of the day, he made dinner, got our daughter off to bed and even made me a cup of tea and some ginger root tea. Wow, did that burn, but as soon as I took it I knew I'd been right. My ears felt like there was steam coming out of them, a la a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and my sinuses heated up like I was sitting by a campfire. I definitely had the head cold part going on.

So now it is the end of our sick weekend, my Hubbie is still a bit tired, but well on the mend. Our daughter is a bit tired, but well on the mend as well. I'm tired and dragging, but not dreading his return to work as much as I thought I would.

Lesson learned: No bragging about how healthy you are, there's always a cold or flu nearby just waiting to make a liar out of you.