Child-borne Curses

Disclaimer!
This post is about getting sick. It will be gross. There will be pictures. If you are easily offended by talk of being sick you should just skip this post.

I am very fortunate in that I have not previously encountered baby-transferred plague. My son is nearly 8 months old and the worst that we've encountered is a case of the sniffles. I attribute this to our recluse-like nature. As a stay-at-home crafter and drinker, I'm not usually exposed to illness... or people, for that matter.

All that changed after New Years. I don't know if it was all the holiday stress messing up his sleep schedule, or all the traveling/exposure to family and friends, but as of Monday, January 2nd, Quinn was sick.

Let me preface this by saying I've read the baby books. I know spit up is normal. I also know that vomiting is very different than spit up. All the books say that you will know the difference. Vomiting is usually of the projectile nature, up to a three foot radius of horribleness. In spite of reading this over and over, I don't think I fully understood it. How could an 18 pound human harness the potential necessary to expel vomit with such force?


I am now a believer. Around 2 in the afternoon, Quinn erupted in an explosion of horrible milky terribleness. I took this picture after I put Quinn down for a nap, before I cleaned up, because I didn't think my husband would believe me. Look at Hobbes; he doesn't even believe it and he witnessed it. Turns out that I didn't have to take a picture, since Quinn puked twice directly on Steven that evening.

Needless to say, this was pretty stressful. Steven and I were frantically checking our baby books for advice on how to proceed, violating Quinn with the thermometer, and deliberating whether or not to take him to the ER. Since he didn't have a fever, we opted to monitor him and avoid the ER and the multitude of pathogens contained within. Luckily, the stomach bug passed the next day (but not without a farewell diaper explosion).

But that wasn't the end of the horribleness...

Wednesday morning started like any other. I woke up, prepared myself some turkey sausage and eggs, fed Quinn his morning solid food, and started my work out. Minutes into it, I ran Quinn to his crib (aka holding pen) and ran to the bathroom. The next 2 hours were 2 minute spans of mothering followed by quick crib-depositry followed by toilet hugging. After finally admitting that I wasn't super-mom and was incapable of effective parenting whilst pinwheeling, I tried desperately to get a hold of my mother (who was substitute teaching that day) and then Steven (who was in a business meeting). After an hour of me being in absolute misery, convinced I was going to end up the evening news when the neighbors would have the police break down my door because of the screaming baby to find me dead on the toilet, my husband finally called me back and said he was on his way home.

Thankfully, he took care of Quinn the rest of the evening and my mom babysat the next day so I could sleep off this plague and attempt to return to normalcy. Much like Quinn, my sickness passed rather quickly (all things considered).

But that's not it! Much like Ju-On (aka The Grudge), this curse soon passed to my husband. I think he provoked it by bragging about his superior immune system. Hubris always begets jinxes. Out of sheer stubbornness, Steven refused to vomit. He told me that he had never once vomited from being sick and he wasn't going to start now. I was pretty incredulous about this factoid, but it has since been confirmed by his mother. (Sidebar: my husband may actually be an android.)

Now, a week after it began, I think it's safe to say that the worst has passed.
This house is clean.