Friday December 17, 2010: Pukey McPukerton

Puke. So much puke today. So much sad "Mama why is this happening to me and why can't I wrap my arms around your neck while it's happening?"

I should begin by saying that I am not okay with puke. And by "not okay" I don't mean I have some kind of moral misgivings like, "I am not okay with kidnapping" or "I'm not okay with Sarah Palin." Now, no one likes vomit. Wait, I take that back. There are some people who like vomit very, very much. I learned about them in my undergrad human sexuality class. But most people who do not have some kind of weird vomit fetish do not like vomit. I have, ever since I was little, had a particular aversion to the stuff, specifically other people's. Not that I've ever liked puking myself, mind you. But I can't even begin to describe the level of anxiety that vomit has caused me my entire life. When I was in elementary school I had nightmares about it. Actually, that was all through grade school. Great. Now that I'm writing this I'm totally going to have vomit nightmares again.

So. Today I went to visit Gavin at daycare because I didn't have to work today and they were throwing (no pun intended!) a little party for the kids and Santa was coming. I got there right about the time Santa did. Gavin was very happy to see me. Much less happy to see Santa (there are no pictures with Santa). He was very clingy while I was there but seemed to be in good spirits. I had him give gifts to Ms. Shelly, Ms. Beth, and Ms. Debbie and then I went on my way. He cried when I left, but Shelly assured me that she'd distract him and get him to calm down after I was gone and I had no doubt this was true. They are good to him there. In fact, before I left Shelly told me that she loved watching Gavin because he was a really easy kid.

I was home for maybe an hour or two when my phone rang and it was Debbie. "Gavin threw up," she said. I am fairly certain that I said, "Oh, no."

"I'm going to need you to come get him," she said. "You're going to want to give him a bath. We cleaned him up as best we could."

So I quickly got the tub ready (meaning that I made sure there wasn't a headful of hair in it and that the rubber bath mat was down and towels were nearby) and set out his pumpkin sweatsuit to dress him in after his bath. On my way out the door my phone rang again. It was Shelly. "Are you still at home?" she asked. "Bring him a change of clothes. He threw up again." I grabbed the pumpkin sweats and headed out, feeling pretty freaked out.

When I got there he was sitting in the high chair table with a white plastic bowl in front of him. Shelly was sitting right by him. He'd puked three times, the first time while he was in his cot napping. (Shelly warned me that the clothes he was wearing and the sheet he was using were probably not even worth saving. Stacy, however, scrubbed them and washed them later and made them okay. If it had been up to me they would have been pitched because there's no way I could handle that.) The room smelled very strongly of "some one just threw up in here" cleaning agents. Gavin was wearing his skelesweats (black sweats with a skeleton design on them. Clearly for Halloween. As are his pumpkin sweats. So sue me), which were his back up day care clothes. The skelesweats were covered in puke. Real, human puke. Not spit up, which I always thought was gross but for which, at that moment, I longed. To make things worse, he'd eaten pizza for lunch. Honestly, I might never be able to eat pizza again.

When he saw me he started to cry. Shelly lifted him out of his seat and kind of held him up hovering above the table so that I could peel his pants off of him. Only that didn't really register at first so I didn't move to do so until she did, struggling with one hand to hold my son and the other to take off his puke sweats. I grabbed the cuff of his pants between my thumb and forefinger and tugged. They were wet. Thank God the lights were dim in there since kids were sleeping and I didn't have to see Gavin covered in puke under fluorescent lighting. I don't know that I would have been able to make it.

We eased him into his clean pumpkin sweats and into his coat. I apologized. Shelly said that it was okay and Debbie wished me a Merry Christmas. Another kid was sick there, too, I think, being picked up by her dad. I don't know in what way she was sick, but she wasn't covered in puke. "My kids are dropping like flies," I heard Shelly say. Shelly warned me that Gavin's puking was coming on suddenly and indicated that I probably wouldn't make it home before he puked again. I had feared this so I brought some baby blankets and put one over him in the car seat and one on the seat beside him. He smelled terrible. His hair. Oh, God. His beautiful blonde curly hair was one of the circles of Hell. They did a really good job cleaning him up. There wasn't any visible puke on him, but the smell. Oh, the smell.

The good news: we made it home without puking. He fell asleep in the car which apparently turned off his vomit sensor. But as soon as we got in the door he started to hurk. Hurking, of course, is not throwing up, but the sound someone makes immediately prior to throwing up. I hustled him into the bathroom and positioned him face first over the bath tub, which he didn't like at all. See, puking is scary and Gavin clearly wanted me to be holding him and hugging him and telling him everything was okay, not restricting his head movement and pushing his body away from mine while saying, "Lean forward, lean forward" (thanks for the tip, MSNBC). I'm sure I've shattered his sense of trust and safety and messed up his attachment patterns for life. Especially when I screamed after he was done puking. "Screamed" isn't the right word. Neither is yelled. But I did make some kind of fairly primal sounding, "Aarrrrrrggggg" sound. Because as I mentioned, I am not good with vomit. And no, not even my own child's. The child I love more than anything and anyone ever. The child whose stinky feet I can't get enough of, whose lip smacking sounds while he eats peanut butter are like music to me. No. Puke is another thing all together.

Thankfully he got most of it in the tub, a little bit on his winter jacket, which I made a mental note to set fire to later on. I wiped his mouth and took him into the kitchen where I paced and then placed him in his highchair so I could decide what to do. I was freaking out a little. I figured his highchair was a place that would be relatively easy to clean and the kitchen didn't have any rugs or carpeting of any concern to worry about. I called my mom. She told me not to give him anything to eat or drink and wait until it'd been awhile since he'd puked and give him some water. I wanted Stacy to come home. Now. I called her at work and thankfully she was able to leave. I needed back up. Am I am bad mom for needing back up while on puke patrol? Perhaps. But I didn't want to be doing this alone. For one thing, I didn't know what was wrong with my son who was clearly very sick. And for another thing, puke. Gavin started to hurk again. I positioned him over the sink, repeating the previously mentioned bath tub nightmare.

By the time Stacy came home he'd puked three more times. Once in the tub, once in the kitchen sink, and once in a metal mixing bowl I'd brought into his bedroom for this purpose. By that time he was so tired that while he was hurking he was trying to lay his head down inside the bowl, and I would say, firmly but gently, "Lift your face!" and he would for a moment before putting his chubby cheek down again on the cool metal bowl. It was the saddest thing on earth. Thankfully he raised his head in time to hurl.

Now, I am not a cold unfeeling person. I realize I am portraying myself as a monster incapable of loving and comforting her son while he's sick. Not true. I loved him and comforted him. There was a lot of cuddling and hugs and back patting and, "You're okay, Bear. You're going to be okay." But I am incapable of looking past puke. So it was hard on both of us. Harder on him, yes. For sure. No doubt.

When Stacy got home she took over the comforting. He puked at least another four times. We were worried about him getting dehydrated since he hadn't had a wet diaper in hours and couldn't keep any liquids down. We were about to take him to the after hours pediatricians clinic at Beaumont when I said to Stacy, "Try one more time. One more sip. Let's see if he can keep it down. If he can't, then we'll go." I didn't want to have to take him. I didn't want to see an I.V. in his arm. He was so tired and had been through enough. So Stacy gave him another sip. And we waited. He kept it down. She gave him another one. We waited. He kept it down. We repeated this several times. Then Stacy decided to nurse him and put him to bed. Fingers are crossed.

Did I mention that we're supposed to leave for Florida tomorrow?