I’m sick of myself.

Seriously.

How much whining can one woman do?

A lot, it turns out. Y’all are lucky I didn’t have this here blog when The Poo was born. Gak, what a bore that would have been:

“Oh, woe is me, my baby sleeps through the night, but she wakes up at 6 AM! YES, 6 AM!!”

Oy, life was so easy then. Going from one to two is, like, totally kicking my ASS, people, and unfortunately you are going to have to suffer the transition along with me, if you keep coming here.

You can’t say I didn’t warn you.

Today I’m not focused on me, though. I’m too pissed off. Pissed off that so many of my friends are losing their jobs, and are in danger of losing their homes.

Pissed off that their kids are eating food bought with government assistance, while they look for jobs they can’t get. These are talented, qualified, educated, thoughtful human beings whose lives are being—let’s be frank—TOTALLY FUCKED WITH by our TOTALLY FUCKED UP FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS and the TOTALLY FUCKED UP GOVERNMENT.

I, myself, am just a hair’s breadth away from financial disaster. If my husband doesn’t get a job for the fall, we have no guaranteed income and no health insurance. As it is, right now we rely on the generosity of others whose financial stability relies on the market conditions.

Which, if you haven’t noticed, are TOTALLY FUCKED UP.

Are you sensing a theme?

I’m pissed off. And I’m afraid. And I’m sad. Why are these people, these stupid, stupid people, who doled out unrealistic mortgages to people who couldn’t, in a million years, make the payments without their jobs, getting bailed out?

Where the hell is MY bail out?

As usual, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That should be out new national slogan.

Only now, the middle is getting poorer, too.

Thank you, Mister Bush, for helping to sink ALL the boats.

So enough about me. Go visit Jennifer and Christina and Jen and Deb, who are all just like me and you: educated, intelligent and hard-working.

They are struggling right now. So lend your ears, and then take their voices into the voting booth with you.

The polls are too close for comfort.

Please, I’m begging you.

Vote.

There is a dead fly on my window sill.

I noticed it Saturday, before I answered the phone to hear the pediatrician’s nurse telling me to bundle Shaggy up and get him to the office right now.

I knew the fly was there, even as I packed the diaper bag frantically for the hospital stay. That fly has been—wait for it—bugging me ever since.

I still haven’t had time to pick it up.

Gross, right?

I just don’t have time. In fact, I have so little time that I had to skip The Poo’s tumbling class today for the second week in a row. We woke up grumpy and sleepy here, and Shaggy Boy is engaged in The HOT fuss!™

I felt guilty for a split-second, just long enough to realize that it’s been almost three months since I’ve had any kind of time to do anything, really.

First I was pregnant and unwell, then I was recovering from the birth, and now … well.

You know.

I feel it in me, the anger and impatience rising up. You’d think I’d be sweetness and light right now, floating on a wave of gratitude that Shaggy’s diagnosis is a simple one, a non-threatening one.

Grateful, I am, indeed.

His disorder does, however, make for a cranky boy. He has trouble eating, and the stridor wakes him up at night and during his naps. At his best, his sleep is light, and at his worst, it is non-existent.

Last night he had The Hot Fuss!™ until about midnight, and then this morning he woke up in the same state. It is a bloody miracle I am dressed, and at 1:15 p.m. I JUST ate for the first time today.

The Poo is dressed and fed. The boy is dressed, fed multiple times, and, finally, fitfully asleep in his swing. The dishwasher is running and the laundry is in process. The beds are made and the counters are clear. My new client’s contract is filled out and signed.

But the floors are a mess and the carpet needs vacuuming. I want to make banana bread, so as not to waste the food that costs so much now. I need to write a column, and start researching the next two. I need to put away all the clean clothes and get the rest of the dirty ones downstairs.

The living room is dusty.

And that fly is still there.

Something had to give, and it came at a cost to The Poo.

I have a feeling it won’t be the last time.

A fully-stocked refrigerator.

The spot on my husband’s neck,  just below his ear.

When my jeans feel loose around the waist.

White ankle socks.

My daughter’s eyelashes.

A freshly made bed.

The green mug I drink my coffee from every day.

intelligentsia coffee beans.

My son’s new smile.

Apple computers.

Reality TV shows.

My mother’s homemade lasagna.

My plaid pajama pants.

Acts of compassion.

My sister.

The watch my parents gave me when I graduated from college.

My wedding band.

Autumn.

Words that go together just so.

And you? What do you love this fine Wednesday morn?

We’re home.

The hospital was, as hospital stays go, a positive one. I cannot say enough good words about the women and men who cared for us there this weekend. Their kindnesses, big and small, and their expertise set our minds at ease during a very stressful time.

Shaggy is fine. He has an anatomical abnormality that children grow out of by the age of two. It sounds like he is choking and struggling to breathe, but he basically has a noisy airway.

I am grateful for a conservative pediatrician who didn’t fool around with waiting. It seemed like the baby couldn’t breathe, and so she made sure we were safe while we waited for the test.

I cannot thank all of you enough. Sitting in that room, watching the small body of my small baby in a hospital bed, the words you shared here and the daily stories on your own sites opened a world to me that gave me much solace.

My family was with me, of course. My mother and my sister’s whole family (including our resident doctor) came to give us their love and support in person.

But they weren’t with me in the middle of the night.

You were.

And I love you for that.

I loved my father with all my heart.

I was a daddy’s girl, living for his compliments, doled out so judiciously that when he bestowed them, it overwhelmed me with pride.

Once, while I acted the fool at the dinner table, telling jokes and goofing off, he gave me a very high accolade, indeed.

“You,” he said, “have a very fine mind.”

I grinned.

“If only you would use it,” he finished.

My grin widened.

My dad died a terrible death. Yes, he had cancer, and yes, it was terminal. This I knew. I did not know I would bear the burden of watching him bleed to death.

He vomited blood and then he passed out in the ER. The doctors pulled a curtain as the nurses physically pulled us from the room.

The next time I saw him, he was on a ventilator and a pretty nurse with kind eyes told us he couldn’t feel any pain.

When we decided it was time to let him go, and the machines turned off, blood gushed from his nose and the corners of his mouth.

I cried out, and turned away.

Then I forced myself to look. To witness.

“I have to watch!” I yelled. “I have to watch!”

It was awful.

Yet I opened my eyes and took it in. It was my job to watch, to open my eyes to his death.

So tell me this:

If I am strong enough to watch my father’s lifeblood leave his body, to watch as his mortal soul made its painful passage, why can’t I stand to watch as another pretty young nurse with kind eyes puts a small needle in my son’s hand?

The weather makes today perfect for cups of fragrant tea and naps.

Shaggy is napping, and I have a big cup of coffee in my hand, but our location leaves something to be desired. The boy is in his hospital crib, deep in slumber. In fact, he sleeps better here than he has ever, anywhere. Last night he gave me the gift of four hours of sleep, after he’d taken a five-hour nap earlier in the evening.

Normally I’d be thrilled - and believe me, I am happy to see him resting so peacefully - but this new love of sleep leaves me to my own devices in a hospital room on the pediatric floor.

I make my way to the coffee pot in the family lounge gingerly, trying not to look at the signs on the doors I pass.

No latex! No droplets! Masks and gloves required!

I picture the small bodies inside those rooms, rooms that need such adamant warnings. It makes my mother-heart ache.

There but for the grace of God.

I am their compatriot in location only, the parents of those children. Shaggy is doing well, suffering in all likelihood from a simple childhood disease that resolves itself and requires no further medical intervention.

The other babies here, those on the isolation ward …

My trusty words fail me.

But this day, this gloomy, gloomy day, gives my mind permission to wander to the darker places. The rain from the hurricane is pounding Chambana, flooding streets and our backyard. The alley behind our home is under water, blocking Mr. C’s path to the hospital.

Several of the five boulders in our back flower bed are submerged.

“I can only see the tops of three of them,” Mr. C reported.

He and The Poo are safe in our house. I picture them in the family room, the lights on against the darkness outside. I hear the wind in our eaves and the rain on the roof.

I want so badly to be with them.

Or I want them with me.

I want The Poo to sweep into her brother’s room, trailing sunshine behind her. I want to hug her healthy, sturdy body and count my blessings. I want my husband to make fun of me for my bad hair day.

I want their energy to ward off the demons of this floor.

Shaggy’s breathing is labored but his oxygen is excellent. He is eating, sleeping and pooping like a healthy baby. This morning when the doctors came in for rounds, he treated them to a series of heart-stopping, charming smiles and coos.

I’m weathering this storm, thanks to the love I feel through my computer screen, and the support of my family. I feel certain that my baby will escape this weekend unscathed, and that we’ll go home tomorrow with this time just a memory in our back pockets.

I can’t be so certain for the others here, and I wish with all my heart I could offer them shelter.

The hospital becomes familiar quickly.

After five years of navigating the medical system while my father lived with and then ultimately died from cancer, I got to know how hospitals work.

You have to finesse the nurses; doctors swoop in and out. It’s the nurses who deliver meds on time and fetch extra pillows and bedding.

The cafeterias close early. Get dinner before 7 p.m. or you’re out of luck, Jack. Vending machines won’t take Canadian quarters and the coffee you get from in-room dining always sucks.

It feels like I just left the hospital. Shaggy Boy was born just 38 days ago, and he and I left here just 48 hours after his birth, to begin our lives as a family of four.

I didn’t expect to be back so soon.

I’m on the fold-out couch in his room, which is, mercifully, private. All the rooms on the pediatric floor here are singles. The floor, newly remodeled, looks almost exactly like the post-partum room where I held him for the very first time.

Except this room has a crib in it.

I’m looking at my son, clad in his Hanna Andersson jammies. They don’t have feet - all the better to monitor his oxygen via a small clip on his big toe.

Last night we were getting ready to go to dinner when Shaggy’s stridor started to act up. I watched him struggle, clearly in distress, and at one point he stopped breathing for a split second. My mother’s intuition kicked in as I looked at the hollow of his throat, and watched him suck it in so hard that it looked like the skin would touch the back of his neck.

He was retracting. His throat and his chest were hollowed, out as his belly worked hard while he tried to inhale.

I called the night nurse and waited on hold for an eternity. The boy’s breathing resolved in that time, and I decided to keep watching him, and if it got worse we’d skip the nurse and go straight to the ER.

Then he slept through the night.

Thinking we were out of the woods, and knowing we had an appointment at the children’s hospital in St. Louis this coming week, I wasn’t expecting our pediatrician to call this morning.

She read the notes, both from his well-baby visit (another doc saw him for that) and from last night’s call. Come in now, said her nurse.

Just bundle him up and we’ll meet you when you get here.

Four hours later I answered questions and watched while a nurse took his blood pressure with an obscenely wee ankle cuff.

We’ll be here until Monday, when the pediatric pulmonologist will sedate him and put a camera down his poor, small throat to determine exactly what is obstructing his breathing. They don’t want us home, in case he has an emergency.

Emergency. Breathing. My baby.

Words not meant to go together. Words that jar the heart. Words that scare me.

I know we’re safe here, that if something were to happen that he would be safer here. That doesn’t stop me from hating the fact that I can navigate to the coffee shop with dreadful ease, after only half a day spent here.

I don’t want to get to know this hospital.

I want Monday to come, and I want the doctor to put his hand on my arm and smile. I want him to tell me that my baby is going to be fine, just fine, and all of this was simply a wise precaution taken by a conservative pediatrician.

I want to go home.

I don’t want to sit here, in the late summer afternoon sun, and watch my son sleep in a hospital crib.

I spent yesterday morning at the coffee shop where I do my writing.

I had three glorious, child-free hours, half of which was spent having coffee with a friend. The babysitter I hired two weeks ago came at 8:30, and I delivered Shaggy into her capable hands, gave her the TV remote and left with The Poo in tow.

I left the girl at school and made my way to my “office.”

As I pulled into a parking spot and fed the meter, I felt the tension in my shoulders begin to lessen. Sure, I had another sleepless night, and yes, I ended up with not one, but two, kids in my bed this morning. But nothing could change the fact that I was alone for the first time in such a long, long time.

I haven’t been alone since the end of July.

Alone, with my Macbook and my cup of coffee, and my thoughts.

As I walked out my door I looked back at Shaggy and felt the slightest twinge of guilt. After all, I was leaving him with someone else for the first time, and he’s only five weeks old. The Poo was two months before I even considered leaving her with a sitter.

I wasn’t guilty for leaving him.

No.

I felt guilty for not feeling guilty.

It was such a relief to sit down and have more than five minutes to myself. If I want to write in our house, I have to literally take my laptop into the bathroom with me, because that is the only time I can shut the door on my husband and kids.

Even then, someone small usually barges in to tell me something very urgent; you know, like “Little Einsteins” is over and could I please put it on again?

Last time I had a newborn I allowed my entire being - mind, body and soul - to be consumed by motherhood. I functioned only in that role. I even left “wife” behind for awhile, making my marriage more difficult than it needed to be.

I won’t do that this time. I need to work, and in order to work I need to leave the house. The paycheck is very important, yes, very important.

Even more important is my ability to maintain some healthy boundaries for myself. I am more than a mommy. I am a person, too. I can’t be the mother I want to be unless I can find a way to be the woman I have to be.

Some may judge me for leaving my new baby so blithely, but tell the truth. Don’t you feel better when you can breathe? When you have an hour without another human being literally attached to your body?

I know I do. And while I may feel a little guilty for not feeling more guilty, that is a price I am more than willing to pay.

Since we’ll be traveling next week—with a newborn! and a three-year-old! yay! not!—it seems fitting that I share with you my take on how to deal with health emergencies when you travel.

(Actually, I’m asking you to go read this to make me look good to my editor. I’ve been slow getting back to work and I need y’all to make her remember why she loves me, m’kay?)

*bats eyelashes pathetically*

***

I don’t consider myself a reactionary parent.

I’m pretty lax with the small stuff when it comes to my 3-year-old. Choosing your battles is a hard lesson to learn, but it’s possibly the most valuable one—at least it has been for me.

Like when your kid wants M&Ms for breakfast and won’t take no for an answer. Sometimes, it’s OK to give in. Sure, it isn’t the healthiest way to start the day, but what the heck.

Ya gotta live a little, no?

But when it comes to my daughter’s physical well being, I can be a bit of stickler. Since she started preschool this past fall, it seems like she’s been ill 51 out of 52 weeks. Strep throat, bronchitis, a staph infection on her face, and various viruses and head colds kept her home almost more than she went to school.

Even so, I try to keep my head and only take her to the doctor when I really have to. Not only does she carry on like I’m cutting her leg off, but any mom worth her salt knows that doctor’s offices and emergency rooms are teeming with germs.

Wanna get sick? Dude, go see your doctor. One year we picked up the World’s Worst Stomach Flu at her pediatrician’s office.

Read the rest here ….