Bodily Fluid Week

From breast milk to spit up to diarrhea, vomit and urine, my world last week was a giant swim through bodily fluids. Couldn’t count on me to make it anywhere on time or to stay very late. Chances are someone was gonna poop, leak, or hurl and all plans to do anything resembling life activity were going to go for a flying leap out the window.

It all started last Saturday when David and I tried to have a night out on the town to see Fiddler on the Roof, my Christmas present. As I breastfed the baby, pinned up my hair and tried to figure out if I had a single pair of tights that fit my awesome new post-partum body, I neglected to account for the fact that I would need batteries for the breast pump if I planned to leave the house for more than two hours. Having no batteries at home, and finding no batteries at the convenient store, I decided I would just have to roll the dice. We had a great dinner and enjoyed the first half of the show, but after feeling the milk let down for the third time that night during intermission, I decided we would have to call it a night for fear of flooding the orchestra section with breast milk.

Although leaving the play early was disappointing, leaky breast milk was hardly the worst of it for us last week.

On Monday, Finny woke up vomiting. I prepared myself for a day on the couch with our old buddies Tissa and Blankie and our stack of Pixar DVDs, but I didn’t realize then that what I thought was a 24 hour stomach bug would actually last the entire week, with Finny waking up every morning crying and moaning about his tummyache: “My tummyache hurts.” After a few days of diarrhea and general crankiness and what felt like 29 showings of The Tigger Movie—I dreamt I was singing “The Wonderful Thing about Tiggers” in my sleep as I strolled through the Hundred Acre Wood with a loaded shot gun—Friday morning I thought we might finally be in the clear. So in an attempt to get us out of the house, I put on our raincoats and ventured out to the mall to get a little walk in. In an attempt to pacify an antsy Finny as I made a purchase at The Gap, I promised him a special lunch in the food court. I had already pre-packed him a healthy lunch of banana and peanut butter wrap and milk, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to share a few french fries. So, as we settled into our Special Food Court lunch, put out our ketchup for dipping and got all situated in our “big boy chairs,” I was pleased to see that Finny was beaming at the special treat of a waffle fry in each hand and a lunch out with Mommy.

Until, about 7 minutes into the lunch, Finny hopped down from his big boy chair and told me for the fifth day in a row that he had a tummyache. Then, he barfed all over both of us in the middle of the food court.

I recruited some generous moms to help me flag down a custodian and some napkins and I stripped Finny down to his onesie; then I strapped him back in his stroller to head for home. I suppose it was about time to leave anyway. The milk was letting down and old Charlie was starting to squirm in his seat. The worst part was that Finny was so disappointed that we had to leave: “What about the lunch, Mommy? What about the french fries?”

I tried to explain that we had to end our lunch early to go home and get cleaned up, but he was so clearly distraught that I reached into my bag of ideas and cleverly pulled out, “Hey, after your nap, we can watch The Tigger Movie, okay?”

Well, self-sacrifice, that’s what motherhood’s all about, right? Self-sacrifice and heaps and heaps of laundry.