Friday, February 26, 2010

In Which I Am Faced With An Awful Dilemma

Connor promptly threw up his breakfast this morning, so he stayed home from school again.  I think he's on the mend, though, as he didn't seem nearly as stuffy today as he did yesterday.  Hopefully that's the case.  Jeremy was still feeling pretty lousy.  Thus far I remain blissfully sickness free, but since I have now blogged about it I have no doubt jinxed myself and will probably be horribly ill tomorrow.  Oh well.

I didn't get as much done today as I would have liked, because shortly after throwing up Connor fell asleep snuggling in my arms and slept for two and a half hours.  I love it when Connor falls asleep on me, but I used to love it a lot more when he didn't weigh about thirty pounds, which doesn't seem all that much until you factor in that somehow when he falls asleep his gravity increases.  I swear the kid weighed about thirty pounds per square inch of body he had draped over my arms and lap, and so when I finally put him down it was not because I wanted to, but because I could no longer feel my hands or feet and if I allowed him to continue sleeping on me I wasn't sure I would be able to feel them ever again.  Since I was iffy about whether or not I could actually walk and carry him over to his bed, finally I sort of slung him over the futon in our living room (which is where I was sitting) and he slept there for another two hours while I did that crazy pins-and-needles dance in the middle of our floor as I regained blood flow to my extremities.

Since the futon doesn't have an apnea monitor in it and Jeremy was gone at physical therapy, this meant that the entire time Connor was asleep I was confined to being within eyeshot in case he decided to have a seizure.  After about hour four I was pretty crabby because not only was I not getting any work done in the office, which was where I needed to be, but I also really, really needed to go to the bathroom. 

It was a serious problem and I was becoming desperate.  What to do?  Wake up my sick kid?  Rush down the hallway and hope he doesn't stop breathing before I get back?  Pee in a bottle?  Can girls even do that anyway, and would I be able to live with myself afterwards if I attempted it?  These are not the types of dilemmas I thought about when I thought of parenthood back before I had Connor.  I thought I would be dealing with things like which cute outfit to put on my kid that day and what preschool to send him to, not potential bladder explosions.  Luckily right before I had to make a decision Jer walked in the front door and saved me just in the nick of time, so disaster was averted.  Let's just say that vase on the mantle was looking better every second.  Eww.

Yet another reason Jeremy is my superhero.  Any man who saves his wife from a situation like that is worth his weight in gold.

~Jess

5 comments:

Kelsey said...

hahahaha! This is awesome! Sometimes as a mom you have to do craaazy things.

leah said...

Oy, what a dilemma! You shall now be dubbed, "She Who Has a Bladder of Steel."

We're investigating monitoring devices for Nolan (he only quits breathing when he is sleeping/central apnea)- we're thinking of vying for a pulse-ox monitor that alarms when his O2 sats drop below 90%.. it would be portable, at least.

I'm actually not sure what to do to monitor him- his apneas are only 10 seconds long, but his O2 is dropping to 79%, and he is having 60 episodes per night... new territory for us!

Julia O'C said...

I always find it so interesting when you write about these kinds of things - things that parents of kids who don't have seizures never really think about.

Elizabeth said...

You're one up on me. Many years ago, when my daughter was a baby, I was traveling late at night with her sleeping in the car. Since she, too, has a disability, and I couldn't possibly wake her to take her out of the car so that I could go to the bathroom (she almost NEVER slept then), I actually peed in one of her BOTTLES and then threw it out the window. I thank you for finally letting me confess to this deed.

Anonymous said...

I love your cats you could mation them in postings?

 
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