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Vomit and Sympathy
My kids have never been big pukers.
There was that one fateful time in a rental car coming out of the Ted Williams tunnel in Boston when Haley spewed a vile combination of milk and chocolate chip cookies. Completely unhinged by the ordeal and the utter insanity of navigating Boston streets, I pulled up to a security guard outside a parliamentary looking building and explained my situation. He kindly offered me a reserved parking space. I struggled to get Haley AND Rory out of the car (see picture...did I mention that Rory was 7 months old at the time adding the "carrying the 24 pound 7-month old" degree of difficulty to my task?) We went inside and were walking our barf-covered selves down the hall to the bathroom. A Parliamentary looking guy walked by, looking down his nose imperiously at our ragtag vomit squad. Haley looked up at him and said, "I throwed up!"
This is now part of my cache of old stories, but at the time it was awful. I remember finally arriving at our destination in Cape Cod, pulling out the carseat and pressure washing it with a hose until I didn't see any more evidence. It’s possible that there might have been a glass of wine in my hand while I hosed.
I've been pretty candid about my BMOTY (Bad Mother of the Year) entries over the years. But last night I was rewarded to learn that my Mommy Radar was intact. (It apparently just functions intermittently as your kids get older.)
Last night I heard my 14-year-old daughter crying. When I went into her room, she said that her stomach and head hurt. Like every Mom-of-teens hasn't heard THAT complaint when someone forgot to do her homework!!! Something about her plaintive wail got to me. Now, keep in mind that earlier in the evening we had watched her perform in a play at school, so it may have briefly crossed my mind that there was some acting going on. Anyway, I climbed into the other side of her bed (after putting the keyboard, mouse, Social Studies textbook, several days worth of clothes and inexplicably, an electric toothbrush on the floor to make room) and figured I would be there for her.
I woke up to a unique sound. A singular sound really. One that can't be called to mind out of the blue but which comes rushing into your brain with way too much familiarity when you hear it. The sound of vomit landing. Ugh. That tells the mother that not only is the kid REALLY sick, but the clean-up is going to be immense and far-reaching.
I swallowed the lump of bile that surged into my throat when I was assaulted by the smell and the thought of what was to come. I urged my daughter to relocate to our room. I momentarily congratulated myself for recognizing the difference between real and made-for-TV sickness. And then I started stripping the sheets from her bed.
Anyone want to share YOUR favorite vomit story???
Di appears every Saturday on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Di at Live and Let Di.
Live and Let Di
Diane is a TriangleMom2Mom featured blogger, appearing every Wednesday.
I try to be the voice of Moms with teens. My daughter Haley is 16. She's at that age where she is convinced that I know nothing. I'm thinking I'll seem a lot smarter when she's 22. We bond over Broadway shows. My son Rory is 13. He started reading the sports page when he was 5 and his passion for anything sports-related has grown ever since. This year he beat out 9 guys in their 40s to win his Fantasy Football League. Watch for him on ESPN in a few years.
My husband Hurley works from home, but travels quite a bit. When he's gone, I usually take a break from making dinner and cleaning the house. Oh, I don't do those things regularly when he's here either! Our parenting philosophy is "choose your battles." The only problem is that we often choose different battles. It keeps it interesting!!!
Diane appears Wednesdays on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Diane on her blog Live and Let Di.
Comments
Guillermo was sick a few years ago. By the third or fourth day, he still wasn't keeping much of anything down except water. We were lounging on the couch and he was thirsty so I thought I would try Pedialyte. I gave him a glass and since I was in a lazy mood let him drink it on the couch. Bad move. He spilled it, of course. I let out a string of cursewords, the bad ones, not at him but at the situation. My husband was going to be so mad and I knew our couch wouldn't be the same. I cleaned it up as best I could but there were large water rings on the cushions. Luckily for me, not for my son, the Pedialyte didn't sit well in his stomach. He threw it up all over the couch I had just cleaned. I felt bad for him, but relieved. Now it wasn't my fault the couch was a disaster.
My daughter has been in the bad habit of coming into our bed around 5 a.m. and (if I'm lucky) sleeps with us for another hour or so on my pillow. One morning about a year ago, I hear her crying a little. I sit up to see what's going on and at that same moment she just lets it rip. Vomit all over my pillow, the blankets. If I hadn't gotten up it would have been all over my face, hair.
So far, my own personal stories are better.
Christmas, age 12 or 13 or so. Stomach bug sends me to the bathroom at least once an hour the night before Christmas. I'm so sick that we actually have to take a break from opening presents. (The horror!)
And then there's the train ride to Florida from NY. And the car trip ... I could go on but it's going to get gross.
Di - your kids are/were so cute!
My favorite French vomit story:
I remember being totally humiliated in the airport in Paris, France. My son was two years old, and after a rather rough plane ride from Munich to Paris, lost his lunch all over me, himself, and my husband.
Ever been on a plane covered with puke? With no shower or clean clothes readily available for hours? THink of having no option but to sit vomit soaked for hours on a transatlantic flight ! Luckily, I had traveled frequently enough to always carry a change of clothes in my carryon!!! Travel advice here: always do it if you travel with kids! a spare set of clothes for any age child can be invaluable.
After changing into our somewhat rumbled casual "spare play clothes" of t-shirts and jeans that had been stuffed into the bottom of a carry-on for a couple weeks, we looked somewhat disshelved, but not smelling too bad. While waiting in the Paris airport for hours for our connecting flight back home, a very well-dressed middle aged business looking man passed us, looked down at us with disdain, and labeled us to his trophy wife: "SLOBS!" After pointedly looking disgustedly at our well-traveled wrinkles, the immaculately dressed couple passed the empty seats near us and stood somewhat farther away, lookiing for seats near less poverty-stricken wayward nomads than us.
Unbelieveable. I was livid. Perhaps had I been alone, I would have found being labeled unacceptably repulsive humorous. But having my young child verbally insulted in public, was infuriating. I politely walked over to the woman, and said, "Excuse me. But I'm not sure if I correctly heard what your husband called me."
She looked twice as embarrassed as I had felt, looking to him pleadingly, horrified that he would repeat the slur. They slunk away speechless rather than admit their assessment of me.
I wasn't able to politely explain our vomit story to the elitist travelers, obviously wearly of being forced to wait with such second-class SLOBS. I can only hope that he is vomited upon in a public place someday, with no change of clothes.
The one time my daughter vomited on me on a plane, I had changes of clothes for each child...but not for me!!! That's a painful lesson to learn.