It is midnight, and on your way to bed you decide to check in on your two-year old sleeping girl. You open the door, and immediately something is off. Something strikes you and you know in an instant that it's going to be a long night. All indicators point to one thing... your senses are heightened, your adrenaline starts pumping, and you get ready. The moment is here. It's go time. It could be nothing else.
Diarrhea.
The smell wafts over and offends your nose like your nose did something offensive first. The nurse at the pediatrician's office predicted it. "We've been seeing a lot of this. 3 days of fever and vomiting, then the diarrhea starts. It could last for up to 5 days..." You chuckle at that last part. 5 DAYS?!?! No one can have diarrhea for 5 days, you think. Especially not after the 24 hour constant bout of fun with it you've just encountered yourself. That would be crazy. She must be mistaken or joking. Both of which would be highly unprofessional. (Yes, she must be super unprofessional.)
You've already been through the 3 days of fever and cleaning up vomit, most of which ended up on you. So you and your husband enter the room stealthily like ninjas in the night, to get to work with cleaning, sanitizing, and laundering again (clothing, sheets, stuffed animals - poor, poor Minnie Mouse - there is just no coming back from that). You do all this before you wake the child and get to work cleaning, sanitizing, and laundering her. But this time it's a new and equally horrible villain. You start to picture vomit and diarrhea going head to head in a battle of vileness, wondering how that would go down. FOCUS. Lots of work still left to do.
After all is cleaned and scrubbed and your husband has Lysol-ed the @$)% out of everything you own, AGAIN, you hold your sweet sick girl, and wish you could make it all go away. You try and get her to drink some fluids to prevent possible dehydration, and she eats a few cheerios. The poor little love's tummy. So empty, and so unhappy. Your heart breaks to see her so weak and so miserable. So you squeeze her a little tighter, rock her so gently, and pray that she feels better soon.
Then you set your alarm for 4am so you can get up and check her room for the possible return attack of the terrible diarrhea monster. (5 DAYS?!?) So you can repeat the whole process over again.
And you would, in a heartbeat... because that is true love. A parent's love. (And also, you really like those sheets).
It is a glamorous life. All things considered, you wouldn't trade it for anything.
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