Tag Archives: sick kid

Why #MommyFail is no longer for me!

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It’s been a spectacular week for Mommy Fail. Case in point, it’s Saturday and I’m finally getting around to writing this week.

I would want to blame the week on Mr. Ornery for waking me up at 3:00 am last Sunday morning screaming that his throat hurt. Forgetting that I have the “medicine bag” in the closet in my room, I went down to the kitchen to grab some ibuprofen for the feverish boy. MommyFail #1 – entering a kitchen at 3:00am is guaranteed to wake up a 4-month-old puppy who can’t understand – for the next 1.5 hours – why it is NOT “play time” yet?  I hate puppy whine when I’m trying to fall asleep.

Then I pull the poor kid out of his pajamas and drag him in the car to the doctor’s office since there’s morning walk-in hours and realize I’m way beyond empty. We pull into the gas station and I realize the wallet is NOT in my purse – MommyFail #2. Back home to get the credit card, back to the gas station, off to the doctor’s office….all the while, I’m wondering why I didn’t just let the poor guy lie on the couch while I called in the antibiotic myself!!

Hours later I feel bad that he’s still miserable despite the ibuprofen and his fever hasn’t budged much and I’m wondering where the Tylenol is that The Little Guy and tylenol-wpI just bought a few days before. Look all over the house. Can’t visualize taking it out of the grocery bag and putting it anywhere. Tylenol in the “medicine bag” expired 17 months ago (MommyFail #3) and hours later, I offer Mr. Ornery some ice cream…. Huh, there it is.

Sometimes I get so frustrated with myself. How could I forget so much? Why haven’t I taken care of x, y or z yet? How is it that it’s been over 2 years and I never thought to change The Little Guy’s name on his social security card (you know, until the IRS is breathing down my neck!!)?? Why can’t I keep this all together?

Well, instead of MommyFail…it’s most likely a bad case of MommyBrain. There’s just too much to juggle. There’s work (which itself is a juggle and a particularly busy week was upon me). There’s after school activities of my 3 boys and my sister’s 3 that my mom and I oven laundrytouch base about every afternoon to figure out the taxi strategy. There’s homework, laundry, house-cleaning. There’s grocery shopping and car inspection overdue. There’s a puppy (I mean, really, why???). There’s relationships and friends. There’s stress and exhaustion. There’s sleep deprivation. There’s just a lot.

It’s not Mommy “Fail”…it’s Mommy hanging on doing the best she can at the moment. So I smile and laugh and thaw out the Tylenol. I sit on the couch and let sick boy cuddle and try not to look at the pieces of fuzz on the carpet. I try to remember to cut myself some slack and remember all the other mommies (and dads) who are out there doing the same thing and juggling the same chaos. It’s a lot of work and it’s constant.

So…no more MommyFail for me. From now on, it’s MommyRocks!  (Sometimes. Not all the time. But a good part of the time 🙂 ).

 

When the pain cry doesn’t stop right away….Ahhhh!!

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You know the cry of pain. It’s different than the “I’m irritated,” “He just took my toy,” or “I need a nap” type of cry. It is unmistakable and it doesn’t happen all that often. When it does, though, I go running down the stairs, scoop up the two-year-old and give him a hug. It’s never fun, though, to look into the face and see his hand full of blood. So I rush him to the bathroom, wondering how much of it is on my shirt (yes, in the midst of blood I do wonder where it’s all going…), and put the first thing I can find on it – some tissues. When I pull them away, I quickly put them back in place and yell, “Kathy, come here.” “What?” she asks when she enters. “Hold pressure. I’ll get dressed and take him in.”

From that point on….it’s just completely automatic. I get dressed. The Little Guy needs a diaper change. I cut off his inner layer of pajamas and throw them away instead of having to pull the shirt over his head and re-open the split lip which has a fragile clot on it and is for the moment not bleeding. Smooth over the 7-year-old who is begging for attention because he has his first field-trip for school and first playdate at a friend’s and is getting a little off-center by the attention given to the annoying little brother…. Pat the 4-year-old on the head and give him a quick hug. Shove a diaper and some wipes into my purse and off we go.

It’s four hours and four stitches later through the emergency room and Sam at ERwe’re back to the car again. It’s about then that I process the morning and realize that (a) I really need to go to the bathroom (problem with being a single mom in the ER) and (b) I’m pretty tired from the nonstop morning.

The suddenness of a kid’s illness really throws off my day – anyone’s day. And it’s not just the schedule, but the whole emotional tone of it. I’ve thought this weekend what it would be like to have been alone with the boys Thursday morning. I would have had to find someone to quickly watch the older boys or take them along with me (and that would have been just a nightmare in the bustle of an emergency room and an exam room full of fun bits of medical equipment and devices…as well as the ubiquitous and life-threatening wheeled three-legged stool!).

Fortunately, I am an extremely well-supported single mom. My sister was there to hold pressure on The Little Guy’s face. My mother arrived a few minutes later and quickly took over my “morning duties” as I looked for a matching set of little shoes. There were no questions about what needed to be done. No grumpy sighs about how their morning was just altered by the need to run boys into day care or drop off at school. No guilt. Total and complete support as we worked together as a unit – a micro-family immediately morphing into a macro-family to meet the needs of the moment.

I know I don’t tell them often enough – but I am so grateful to these two other women who make it possible for me to parent three boys.

Thank you. And I love you.

Oh…and…um….about the fact that Mr. Ornery just spiked a fever before going to bed tonight….and likely won’t be going to daycare tomorrow….. Anyone? Anyone?