1. Tuesday: Christmas Eve
In God's providence, this was, indeed, a Christmas of illness in which many of our plans and the external trappings had to be changed or cancelled in order for this mother to welcome the baby God sent her this Christmas--a very sick baby!
One child had come down with an illness the prior week in Atlanta, so we had had illness in the house for more than a week. I was not handling it as well as I would wish and was cracking under the unrelenting needs of multiple sick, demanding, wailing children, my extremely little sleep (sometimes none) night after night, and feeling the need to "put on Christmas" or "I would fail everyone!" (and then what? the world would end? my reputation would be ruined?).
With my arms full of a feverish, limp toddler, my family members got the opportunity to step up and do what I couldn't. As our family does not decorate until Christmas Eve day, I felt like I had seemingly "nothing ready"--in retrospect, what foolishness!--so my children down to the four-year-old did virtually all the decorating for me! I was very grateful, but the truth is that Christmas is not the decorations in my home, and the remembrance of Jesus' birth will happen whether or not I have been the Hostess with the Mostess.
 |
| Dressing the Infant of Prague for Christmas |
 |
| Big brother comforting sick brother |
 |
| Christmas Eve at Urgent Care |
My daughter offered to forgo Christmas Eve fun of board games and such to clean the kitchen for me and make the homemade cinnamon rolls that were going to be one more thing I skipped.
Chris and the older children attended Midnight Mass, but this Mama had the duties of her station in life to attend to: sitting vigil with a sweet baby.
How blessed we are to have a vibrant, diocesan Latin Mass community! Almost 400 people were in attendance at Midnight Mass!
2. Feast of the Nativity of Jesus Christ (Christmas!)
On Christmas morning, I kept the little early risers occupied while we waited for the others to wake up. Thomas kept trying to pick into the Christmas Room! I woke up sick, after having stayed free of it for 11 days, and over the course of the day, the older children developed sniffles, too. Thankfully, their older bodies treated it as a minor cold, not nearly a big deal.
Goofing around with mustaches . . .
David was already taking a morning nap, his brow furrowed, his face not relaxed as he still felt so sick. Mary was too worried about his welfare to open gifts, so she sneaked away to watch him breath and make sure he was safe. I, too, sneaked away to do the same thing and found her in there.
Two mothering hens just lying there, watching him breathe . . .
But the little fella began to perk up! He began nursing (a lot!) and taking sips of water. He smiled sometimes. He began walking on his own instead of constantly needing to be carried and he began talking to me again. Such gifts on Christmas day!
 |
| His first smile in about a week |
 |
| Daughter's homemade cinnamon rolls: maybe not pretty but very delicious! |
 |
| "I don't want to eat breakfast: I'm reading my new book!" |
 |
| Asleep again during opening of gifts |
 |
| "I don't want to open more gifts: I'm reading my new book!" |
 |
| Thomas carried around these books for at least 48 hours straight, except when asleep! |
On the afternoon of Christmas day, Joseph (almost 7) was playing alone in the front yard when a fawn, a buck with a rack, and a doe ran right in front of him across our driveway! We caught it on our security camera . . .
I noticed David's temperature readings were not as high and, for the first time, were starting to creep downward instead of up. He actually asked me for a snack! He actually ate food! He asked me to go play outside and, while, of course, I said no, he was no longer lethargic! David ate his dinner, began making baby jokes again, and at bedtime, his temperature was normal for the first time in nine days. Praise Jesus on His Birthday! That was my best Christmas gift of all.
A meditation . . .
Even though I am tired, even though it is discouraging to clean up sickness filth over and over all day, even though it is disappointing to keep cancelling special, annual events, I am so blessed and grateful that I get to be the mother who stays home to care for them. On Christmas Eve, when I was standing in line at the pharmacy to buy more medicine, I overheard the clerk saying that her child had been vomiting all day the day prior and was home right then vomiting all day (with what babysitter? a paid employee? a family member?) and that, when she finally got off shift that night at 10:00 p.m., she planned to take him to the hospital Emergency Room if he was still vomiting.Nobody works as a clerk at the pharmacy for glorious reasons, for self fulfillment. Clearly this woman could not even afford to miss her minimum wage income for two days while her child was so sick and needing her and maybe would benefit from hospital treatment. She couldn't be that mother I get to be and I was throwing emotional tantrums about all my difficulties.
When the tots are sick, may I remember to ask myself, would I rather be obliged to be slinging hash or stocking shelves for some other employer?
3. Christmas Octave Routine
My general routine over the Christmas octave is that we eat breakfast, then all stay in the kitchen to write a couple of thank you notes for the day. I have us all write to Relative #1, so I can put all our notes in one envelope and mail it with one stamp. Then we all write to Relative #2 and so on. The system works. This year our 6-year-old is a competent enough writer (with lots of help!) to join the crew of writing his own thank you notes and he is actually excited.
Then everyone has to do their music practice for the day and probably do a Christmas clean-up chore, all of which takes us till about lunch time. Then we have Something Fun planned for each day: maybe fancy, usually not fancy; sometimes out of the house, sometimes at home; sometimes with pals, sometimes just with our family. Lots of reading of new book, watching fun movies, and eating too much food.
4. Thursday: Feast of St. Stephen, the First Martyr
With just a few sniffles at that point, we girls attended our long-scheduled Christmas Tea, as it books out months in advance and cannot be rescheduled. We had such a lovely time, as always. The girls had the fun idea to pose in this series . . .
Christmas Day was so exhausting that we ate leftovers and made what was to be our fancy Christmas Dinner on St. Stephen's Day . . . and we think this is a new family tradition! On Christmas Day, we've been to Midnight Mass and/or 7:00 a.m. Mass, and are very tired, with everyone needing a nap a one o'clock, but that's right when the parents would have to rally and start making a feast.
5. Friday: Feast of St. John the Apostle
Our family enjoyed watching "Sergeant Stubby: An American Hero," which we bought on YouTube as it is not available right now on Amazon or Netflix. Read the review at Plugged In. I added this to my list of Movie Reviews, available for all to read.
 |
| Chris lit our first fire pit of the season |
Our planned making of gingerbread houses will have to wait because, as I sneezed compulsively and prepared to drag out supplies, my husband actually said, "NO! You look like death warmed over. Go lay down!"
I felt like death warmed over, so lay down I did.
6. Reading Aloud
A friend shared this newly discovered website called Good Books for Catholic Kids. I mined the 50 Classic Books that Middle Grade Girls Love and put a lot on our Christmas lists just in time! Note that a bunch of these books would work for boys, too. I haven't even had time to explore the other book lists yet!
I am currently reading aloud "The Happy Hollisters" to the six-year-old (although everyone would love it) and we are hanging by its every word. It is a mystery novel series, but totally sweet, without quite the slightly increased edginess of The Hardy Boys (I say, having only just started it, not completed it).
Other novels being read in the home right now are:
- "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe
- "Alice in Wonderland"
- Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales (a series of history books)
- "My Antonia" by Willa Cather
- "Jack and Jill" by Louisa May Alcott
- "Socks" by Beverly Cleary
- "Farmer Boy" by Laura Ingalls Wilder (me reading aloud)
- "The Phantom Tollbooth" (me reading aloud)
- "The Doctrines of Genesis 1-11" by Rev. Victor P. Warkulwiz
- "Echoes of the Jurassic: Discoveries of Dinosaur Soft-Tissue"
- "Censored Science: The Suppressed Evidence"
- "The Metaphysics of Evolution"
- "Discipline That Lasts a Lifetime" by Ray Guarendi
7. Bonus Reading
"Kindergarten Teachers Are Quitting, and Here Is Why: Comments from exasperated kindergarten teachers throughout the country" by Peter Gray, Ph.D (12/20/2019).
"Your Marriage: You Have No Idea of the Good You Are Doing" by Doug Mainwaring (3/7/2017)
For more 7 Quick Takes Friday, check out This Ain't the Lyceum.
I've been in your shoes with a sick kid like that and also sick like that myself. I have had times when I've gone to Urgent Care and the ER with respiratory stuff for me or my kiddo, and we've been given breathing treatments, had a chest x-ray done, and then sent home after being told it was a virus and to use our inhalers or nebulizers.
ReplyDeleteIf things were really THAT bad, the Urgent Care providers would have told you to take him to the ER. The three-week stay at UC Davis Medical Center for my kiddo (that included a week and a half in the PICU, being put on a ventilator, and almost dying in front of me) started when I took him to a doctor's appointment because he was coughing a lot and lethargic. The doctor took a listen and immediately had his medical assistant escort us next door to Methodist Hospital. (Two ambulance transfers and one other hospital later, we were being wheeled into the PICU at UCD Medical Center.)
Another story:
In January 2018, the ER physician failed to do a decent examination of me and sent me home with a raging sinus infection that would have likely gotten me admitted to the hospital with respiratory exacerbation if there had been a bed for me. (The only reason I got a breathing treatment at all was that the radiology tech ordered one, and it was my favorite respiratory therapist on duty.) I can't have oral steroids, so my regular doctor was FURIOUS with the ER physician because there was so little she could do for me other than give me the strongest antibiotics she could find, two different nebulizer meds with written instructions on how to mix them to hospital strength, and a prescription for the REAL Sudafed that is kept behind the pharmacy counter and requires signing over your firstborn child to receive. I missed a week of classes because I was sleeping 18 hours a day. It was another month before I was anywhere close to normal.
That experience led me to wait to go to the ER when I got hit really hard with a cold in February. I was positive that they were going to tell me it was a virus, maybe do a breathing treatment, and send me home. I finally went in after I heard that an elderly parishioner was admitted with the flu, and the deciding factor was that she was feeling apathetic about everything. (My kiddo is immunosuppressed, so the possibility of flu piqued my concern.) When I got there, we found out in triage that I had a raging fever, tachycardia, and a chest x-ray was immediately ordered. When I finally got taken back two hours later, my mom had to bring me clean clothes because I was coughing to the point of vomiting. The ER doc came in and asked if I wanted to be admitted. I said "yes", and he had them put me on IV fluids and the kill-them-all-let-God-sort-them-out IV antibiotics until he could figure out what I had. Five minutes later, he came back in looking pale. Apparently, my labs had come back showing that my hemoglobin was low enough to set off the "transfuse her RIGHT NOW" alarms in his head, my clotting factors were tanked, my blood numbers were wonky, and I was in sepsis.
The reason I'm telling this story? I actually felt worse in January 2018 (with just a sinus infection and respiratory exacerbation) than I did in February when I was in sepsis with pneumonia.
I honestly think your instincts were right-on, and that you would have been fine taking David to the ER on Christmas Day, even with him perking up. (The ER staff would be telling you that you should always come in if you're really that concerned.) You were getting him medical attention and you did have people keeping an eye on him. You did just fine, mama.
Also? The most peaceful Christmas morning I've had with my kiddo was 2012 when he was getting over a virus and having febrile seizures. The two of us just took a nap all morning. It was wonderful.
Wow, Jen, you've experienced some seriously frightening bouts with viruses! I'm glad you made it out okay, and more than once! Yes, I wish I had followed my instinct a little sooner. As a mom of six, I felt stupid that I had not noticed that the baby was not eating, drinking, or nursing anymore and his diapers were dry at that point. We haven't had any babies really get super sick, and I'm so busy, that it escaped me. It was actually a friend who has 8 kids and a lot of experience with illness who pointed out to me late Christmas Eve that D needed more attention than he was getting. Anyway, lesson learned, I hope, and D is a happy ball of energy now while the rest of us get over our sneezes and coughs.
DeleteMy kiddo is a 29.5 week preemie, and I was a very low birth-weight baby. (I'm a twin, and my brother was 6 lbs 4 oz. while I was 3 lbs 12 oz.) Preemies and low birth weight babies can have asthma and reactive airways, and both are true about us.
DeleteMy son's scary experience in 2011 was when we were living in the Central Valley of California which has abysmal air quality. He had so many viruses that landed us at Urgent Care or the peds ER.
My pneumonia/sepsis episode earlier this year was caused by a stress-induced clotting disorder that they discovered very accidentally when I was in the ER. My hemoglobin was at 6.6, which is slightly over half of the low end of normal for a woman my age. The threshold for a transfusion is 7.0 or below, so I ended up getting transfused the next morning to try and get my hemoglobin improving. We think that my natural tendency toward anemia is related to this disorder and that my body was too stressed to fight a respiratory virus that my son gave me. I was in the hospital in an isolation room for a few days while they tried to get to the bottom of what was going on, and it was quite a few weeks before I was "normal". (To be fair, I probably shouldn't have tried going back to work a few days after my hospital discharge when I was still coughing to the point I was vomiting. One of my students excoriated me for this and ordered me to go home and take a nap.)
The clotting disorder is part of why I was allowed to have a hysterectomy in October. (The other reason is how deadly pregnancy is for me.) They were doing weekly bloodwork after my hospital discharge to make sure my iron was improving, and I went for bloodwork during the week of my period (which was horrible). I was feeling like I was hit with the flu, and my bloodwork came back showing that I had lost some ground in my healing and my factors were wonky again. My hematologist knew I had been asking for a hysterectomy, so he offered to go to bat for me with my insurance company because it was concerning to see this. (My hematologist has since kicked me off his service because everything is under control at the moment.) Surgery found damage from my emergency c-section that had to be fixed that we think was part of why I was getting hit so hard with anemia. The recovery was easier than any other surgery I have had, and I have felt so much better since.
I always enjoy your SQT, even when I don't have time to comment, but this week is full of gems!
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your thoughts on the plight of the pharmacy technician. When one is cleaning bodily substances out of carpet, it's hard to be grateful, but it is important to appreciate the gift of caring for my kids. Hopefully everyone gets back to health (in both of our homes!) soon.
I just put Sergeant Stubby on hold at the library. We're always on the lookout for "family movies" that aren't scandalous in any way. Thank you for sharing. :)
We just found the old black and white series "Dennis the Menace" on hoopla (our library streaming service). Although Dennis gets into trouble and can be a little irritating, the three episodes we've seen so far seem enjoyable and wholesome if you're looking for something new to watch.