The Silver Lining In Sick

The best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry (Robert Burns) — and this past weekend was certainly a prime example. My husband, two year-old daughter and I were set for a weekend of friends, family, a museum visit, a birthday celebration (Daddy’s) and a partridge in a pear tree when I received news: the daycare phoned me Friday saying she had a fever and stomach pain. I picked my daughter up immediately and wanted to get her hydrated. She promptly spit up her watered-down apple juice about 90 seconds after ingesting it. She didn’t cry; she let it come right out as matter of fact, to which I responded, "No problem honey, everyone spits up sometimes, I’ll grab a towel." On the inside though, I wasn’t nearly as calm. I knew we were in for it.

For the next 36 hours, my daughter continued to hurl up anything she ingested within minutes, and a constant flow of acidic diarrhea that let to a nasty diaper rash (despite cleaning her up practically immediately after she had a dirty diaper). And when I say constant flow I mean it — sometimes within one minute changing her, we would hear her digestive tract growl and gurgle so loudly it’d put Homer Simpson to shame. I barely had time to wash my hands in between diapers sessions.

I’m aware I’m sharing the down and dirty details but despite her having bouts with stomach bugs in the past, I’ve never experienced anything quite like this before. And between presenting a calm and nurturing front for her and hiding the fact that I was terrified and so torn up that my guts hurt, I realized something truly surprising to me. My girl, aside from being in obvious pain, was happy. Happy as in giggling, teasing, smiling, and laughing. Yes, she complained when she pooped and she cried when I cleaned it up, but aside from that she was in an incredibly good mood.

For the life of me, I have absolutely no idea where this trait came from. I am very emotional when I get sick; I’ll cry if the milk comes out to fast. And to me, vomiting is quite possibly the worst thing on earth — complete torture. My husband is not much better. Instead of expressing everything as I do he turns inward: he just wants to crawl in a hole and die. So the fact that our daughter was in a playful, spirited mood while being as sick as a dog blew my mind. She shocked me when while I cleaned her poop and simultaneous spit up, she didn’t whine or whimper. She just looked as me as I was wiping her down and simply said in her sweet voice, "Thank you Mama.”"

It took everything I had in that moment to keep it together, when all I wanted to do was break down and cry on the spot. Even in the worst of her physical circumstances, she wasn’t affected and just stood there calmly waiting for it to get better…because she knew it would. She taught me something about reactions and expectations: I can always control how I choose to deal in any situation…even the ones I think are completely out of control (such as one’s body deciding it’s not going to digest anything for an entire weekend).

Don’t get me wrong — my daughter will still lose it when she thinks she should have her cookie now instead of later, and for a thousand other reasons as well. She’s in the full-on throws of Toddlerhood after all. And she probably learned that from watching other kids react the same way when they wanted their cookie, which is also par for the course. But apparently no one ever taught her to lose it while her body was on a food strike, and I am grateful my husband and I never got around to teaching her that. Because in the absence of receiving that lesson, she taught us something so much more valuable instead.

Author: Amy