The True Mommy Experience

I have repeatedly heard that, due to Halle's calm and jovial personality, her great eating habits, and her sleep-full nights, I have not had the "true baby experience." This may be true, but I can assure you I have now had the true Mommy experience.

Last night around 7:30 Jason got sick. Sick, sick. Food poisoning symptoms sick. The worst of which were the chills. He was wearing socks, sweatpants, a shirt, a skull cap, a blanket, a heating pad, and the heat was on 77 in the house and he was freezing. He was up and down all night, didn't get any sleep. I went to bed feeling fine, but by 3 a.m., I too was sick. Not nearly as sick as Jason, but with the nausea, vomiting, muscle aches and light headedness, I wasn't exactly enjoying myself. Tracey called this morning to confirm that she too was sick (we can only assume the rare burgers we had at the BBQ on Saturday were to blame). For a minute, that was good news, because it meant it wasn't something contagious that Halle or Vanessa could catch. But when Halle woke up a few minutes later, I quickly remembered the bite of hamburger we gave her. Nooo! Halle, the angel that she is, didn't even cry when she threw up. Jason said he heard her coughing in the middle of the night, but figured if she had thrown up, she'd let us know, and she never did. Since she was in good spirits I fed her breakfast and she's kept everything down, so hopefully the little bite she had didn't affect her system too much.

All I wanted was a mother or a wife to take care of me while I felt like poop, but instead it turns out I'm the mother and the wife in this family. Why didn't anyone tell me? And of course, in the early hours Jason wasn't in any shape to help out (and I didn't want him too, he was definitely worse than I was), but bathing a baby, changing sheets, doing laundry, feeding her breakfast,... all between trips to the bathroom and hold-onto-the-couch-for-dear-life-I'm-about-to-pass-out moments... is not an easy thing to do. Staying active seemed to pay off though, it's just before noon (despite the timestamp below) and I'm feeling a lot better. Jason is finally sleeping, and Halle is taking a nap too. Whew. If that's not the true Mommy experience, I don't know what is.

I find it incredibly odd that neither Jason nor I have had any kind of flu or sickness to this extent in years. Many, many years. If ever. And somehow we got the stomach flu and food poisoning in the span of just a few weeks. Please don't tell me this is the kind of affliction that comes in threes!