Friday, January 13, 2006

Where is my Magical Mother Wand when I need it? And other ramblings

My little man is sick - sicker than I have seen him in his short life of almost nine months. He started coming down with a cold on Wednesday night and it has just gotten worse. He has such a hacking cough, stuffy nose, hoarse sounding voice, fever, etc. He is miserable and sounds so pathetic. He isn't sleeping well and will hardly eat a thing. He just cries pitifully every now and then, and a few times, I have cried with him to see him feeling so bad. I am scared to death of anything bad happening to my son, and so am watching diligently for any sign of RSV or croup.

His getting sick is one of the things that sucks about having him in daycare. Since he has been going to daycare, he has caught one cold after another. On Monday when I went to pick him up, another mom was picking up her baby. At our daycare, they have children separated by age, so all the babies are in one room. The baby she was picking seemed fine, but her other son (who is not in the baby room but does expose his brother at home) had a distinctive seal-like cough. And I was thinking, nice, expose my son because you aren't responsible enough to keep your child at home with a cough like that. And now Camden is sick.

Besides being irritated with that lady, I'm a little mad at my breastmilk. Why? Because it's supposed to protect him from things like this! One of the many reasons I chose to breastfeed is to provide my son with as many antibodies as possible, especially since I knew he would be entering the daycare environment. He had exclusive mommy milk for almost 6 months for that reason. I've had to supplement as he's gotten older, but he still gets mainly mommy milk. Apparently those antibodies in my milk suck. He caught his first cold at 3 months old, before even going to daycare, and has since had so many I have lost count.

I hate to watch him suffer. It's one of those mommy things I didn't expect - that it would hurt me to see him hurt. I would take his illness upon myself if it would spare him. When I was going through the infertility, my mother told me on more than one occasion that she wished she had a magic wand that she could wave and take away my pain and my trial and make it all better. She couldn't, but with all her motherly love, she wanted to do that for me. I understand that now. I wish I had a magical mother wand I could wave and take away Cam's sickness and pain.

I realize a cold is small in the realm of sicknesses that can afflict a child. I think it bothers me so much because we worked so hard for him, waited so long. And I don't want anything bad to happen to him. My husband lost a son from his previous marriage. I watched my husband go through that loss before we were engaged. And I know from watching that and from having Cam, I doubt I could handle such a loss. So even a minor illness still freaks me out (it's the new mommy syndrome). Hopefully one day I will get over that fear, or at least get a better handle on it. But for now, could somebody please return my magical mother wand or at least tell me where to get one?

4 comments:

ShelahBooksIt said...

I hope he starts to feel better! And if you get one of those magic wands, can you tell me where I can order one?

Mrs. Darling said...

Hey my daughters name is rachelle spelled that very same way! I call her Wendy on my blog. Another thign we have in common is that Tinkerbelle is theresult of infertility drugs after 7 years of trying and Peter is actually a frozen embryo that we had frozen for five years. He was frozen tow months before Tink was concieved so really you could look at it that he's older than she is when in reality he's four years younger. LOL hey come back and visit me sometime.

Hope you're son starts feeling better.

MusicalMom said...

Oh, I feel for you! It's so horrible when you have sick kids. :( I hope he starts feeling better soon!

Pamela said...

Just think how bad he would be if you weren't giving him breastmilk!! Poor guy. I hope he feels better soon adn he would probably have RSV now if it wasn't for your milk.