A Plague Upon Our House

Dear Britax:

Hi! I am a big fan of the cute, cute, cute car seat covers you have developed in the years since Moonpie was a baby.  The cow print cover?  Unisex and adorable.  Love it.

However.

When the baby is projectile vomiting all over the back seat, and I am trying to mop up vomit on the side of the road so she doesn't have to ride home in a pool of predigested gunk, the Teflon stain repellent stuff is more annoying than helpful.  Having warm vomit trickle off the car seat while it is occupied is not as helpful as I am sure you were envisioning. 

Also, really.  Really?  You couldn't figure out a better way to engineer removing the cover for cleaning other than to completely dismantle the car seat?  And are you fucking kidding me with the handwash and drip dry shit?  Do you know how long it takes to drip dry a car seat cover?

Anyway.  Cow print cute.  Car seat design? FAIL.

Hugs and kisses, send me lots of free stuff,

--- Soper

For the past three weeks we've been dealing with strep.  Shug and Moonpie both got it, got over it, and then got it again.  With vomiting.  And fever. And diarrhea.  Being the loving, involved mother that I am, I jumped right into the fray and came down with strep, too. 

Only it wasn't just strep.  It was strep, twice, with H1N1 thrown in for hilarious diaper changing fun.

The up side of vomiting for two days straight is dehydration, which has revealed my awesome abs that have heretofore been hiding beneath a layer of ... we'll call it water retention.  Definitely not fat.

SOPER: (staring at flat stomach in mirror)  Look! I have a six-pack!  Or, well, maybe a three pack.  What would you call a three-pack?

D: A slow weekend?

I want what every mother with a sick infant wants.  A shot of tequila and an Italian pool boy   A magic shot/pill/suppository that will make the vomiting go away and my normal happy baby reappear.  I do not want the pediatrician to tell me to give the baby crushed ice and Popsicles and spoon feed her milliliters of water until she can take a bottle again.  I especially don't want my husband to cheerfully agree that is the best course of action and refuse the prescription for phenergan before trotting back to his clean, sterile office while I lug home a sluggish, vomiting mess.

Crushed ice, my ass.

I can't say D has been an ass about all this, though.  He has been truly helpful, mopping up Shug's vomit so I can go vomit, letting Moonpie watch t.v. until her brains leak out of her ears just so I can get a decent stretch of sleep.  Last night, as Shug screamed and screamed and screamed, even his calm doctorly reserve started cracking, and even he got scared.  After speaking with the pediatrician on call and helping strip Shug's bed (again) and change her clothes (again) he turned to me and told me he understood now how scared I must have been in Kazakhstan when Moonpie was so sick.  "At least here I speak the language and can call a doctor I know personally for reassurance," he confessed.  "You must have been terrified."

Uh, yeah.  It was nice, though, to have him get it, really get it, even if it was four years ago.  It was, at the time, the most horrible experience of my life, but in a weird way it was the best welcome to parenting I could get.  Yes, Moonpie was very sick, yes, all her skin peeled off, and yes, I was trapped in a foreign country being monitored by KGB and couldn't even call home for reassurance because a hurricane had knocked out the phone grid to the Southeast... Wait, is there a but in there somewhere?  Oh, yeah.  All that, but, once I was safely on the other side of it, I knew that I could handle just about anything that was about to come.  Parenting isn't about a pretty nursery and cute clothes and artfully done photography with cute props, it's about happily wiping someone's boogers with your bare hand when you can't find a tissue and letting someone who has just rolled over during a diarrhea diaper change cling to you bare bottomed while you clean the mess with your free hand.   And being glad that you caught the flu and strep from them, because now you have abs of steel moderately strong plexiglass.

So basically we are sick, and I am giddy from a lack of hydration and sleep.  And I'm sure there is a point in all this somewhere.  If you find it, please send it to me.  I'll be the one huddled under the blanket on the couch, apparently happy that we all have the flu.

Comments

[Karen]

You poor things.

and I second the Britax seat cover mess. For the record, I did machine wash mine in cold gentle. It survived and looks fine.

[Tine]

Oh. My. Goodness. I can't say I've had any experiences like your Kaz-tastrophe 4 years ago, but boy have I been there with the flu and strep. You get nothing but sympathy from me, and if I could hold one or both of your poo-and-puke-covered daughters for you so you could rest, I would do it in a heartbeat. I'm sending the strongest get-well vibes I've got.

[OmegaMom]

Aw, man, that sounds horrendous. Glad you seem to be making it through to the other side!

As for the Britax covers--I just tossed ours in the washer & dryer, and it worked just fine (denim cover).

[Lut C.]

Poor you! And I thought a single vomiting session in the early morning was bad, hah, a mere trifle!

Get well soon!

[Sue]

Ugh, wishing you a speedy recovery so you can continue to enjoy your family only with less spewing. I wash our Britax cover on gentle and low-dry. It comes out fine.

[liz]

Sending hugs and bottles of GatorAde.