Monday, October 25, 2010

In Sickness and in Health

It's no secret that children are mobile germ recruiting centers, I was very fortunate (or sheltered?) in the first year of Delaney's life to experience very few illnesses with her. She seemed resilient and superhuman while around me babies were sniffling and hacking, spiking high fevers and emptying out their stomachs on whatever was closest.

The second year however, has seen a dramatic shift in the health pattern. More hours spent at the Y day care while mommy works out? The start of preschool? Nature's way of catching up? Who can say. But for a while I began to feel like a dry area under her nose was the exception rather than the rule. They can't blow their nose at this age, no matter how many times I make like a circus clown and blow a pretend trumpet blast out of my own nose into a tissue to demonstrate. Delaney will gamely hold the tissue to her nose and blow out of her mouth in an Ffff sound, like she does for her soup. Often asking "Mommy, hot?" about the tissue I've given her.

I have a friend who is her child's own personal Neti pot. She lays her daughter on her back while blowing hard into one nostril, forcing the congestion out of the other. It's impressive, but not my scene, man. It feels a little too National Geographic for me. I usually end up pulling out the bulb syringe sent home with me from the hospital when she was an infant. Or as I have named it, after witnessing it's beauty in action - The Snotsucker. Delaney doesn't really like the Snotsucker, but she doesn't hate it either. Sometimes she'll actually lean into it to help me drag out the green noodles that are clogging her breathing. I like to think we're a team when she's like this, battling the illnesses that seem to hit kids weekly at certain times of the year. The Snotsucker makes her cough and sputter, but she does breathe better after it's used and I believe her little two year-old brain reluctantly admits that the thing works. Plus she's seen her buddy undergo the National Geographic method and that she has lesser of two evils by her own calculations.