Emerging...

So, the last month has been rather hellish. I obviously really pissed someone off. Charlie came down with that nasty, nasty cold that's been going around sometime shortly after Thanksgiving. This coincided with some teething so it took us awhile to figure out what was going on. We went to the doctor for his 15 month check-up and discovered that he had a little ear infection. As that cleared with some antibiotics, up he entered the OMG how much snot can one little nose produce section of the cold which wasn't that bad except for sleeping because he wouldn't be able to breathe so there was a lot of rocking.

In the midst of all this, I got The Cold. The 2nd week we were sneezing and coughing together. Luckily, Charlie had decided he enjoyed Teletubbies a few weeks earlier so we spent one notable afternoon on the couch after yet another disastrous nap. Charlie actually sat and watched 2 full episodes as well as a random cooking program while I contemplated why anyone needs sinuses anyway. This is the child who generally sits for 10 minutes tops, God was obviously feeling just a little guilty about the previous weeks. Happily, I discovered that a great deal of my difficulty was from a lack of humidity so, as long as I sat in the shower 3 times a day, my sinuses were no longer burning tubes of misery. Apparently, no matter how exhausted you are, it is unwise to deprive your over-enthusiastic mucus membranes (thanks pregnancy!) of a daily dose of humidity via the shower. Lesson learned.

Charlie and I then battled it out to see who needed the humidifier more as we entered (for the love of God!) week 3! Week 3 greeted us with my husband coming down with The Cold although he got to take all the lovely medicine so it didn't make him quite the tower of misery Charlie and I were. That week the congestion migrated down into our chests so that Charlie and I had adorable matching smokers coughs. Happily, I learned from one of my pregnancy books, the baby had already started squishing my lungs to a notable degree which explained my propensity to see black spots and wonder at what point you go to the emergency room for oxygen deprivation.

Charlie and my husband both came out of the worst of The Fucking Cold (as it was now known) by the end of the week. However, I am blessed with an immune system that doesn't attack the small being growing within me which I am so grateful for. The corollary to this seems to be that my immune system doesn't want to take any chances and is apparently debating if it should just perhaps send a strongly worded note to any other invaders. This meant that on the Friday that everyone else started to feel better, I started the day by apparently trying to cough up my toes which also triggered my morning sickness and led to my back strenuously objecting to puking and coughing at the same time. According to my back, It Simply Isn't Done! This, of course, was the day neither of my OBs were in the office and a brief chat with the nurse revealed that all I could really do was try heat and tylenol unless it got "really bad" and then I could go to the ER or call the doctor on call. While I was miserable, I doubted if 4 hours in a waiting room chair was really the way to go so, my husband stayed home from work and I lay in a stupor. Of course, the best position is flat on your back for the first day or so but when you're pregnant you can't do that because of the whole vena cava, black spots issue so I instead had to manage to lay on my side with an artful arrangement of pillows. Mind, I was also continuing to cough in a highly enthusiastic manner throughout the whole experience which just helped things so very much. My husband spent the next several nights in the guest room. Oh, did I mention that the violent 20 minute coughing fits would wake Charlie so we had to cough into pillows?

I was finally able to really rejoin the land of the living Tuesday which was just in time to frantically finish all the Christmas prep that had been going at a good clip but had, at least, seemed manageable until a few days previous. Just as our families were set to descend, my husband got a stomach bug and was completely out of commission for a full 24 hours and on limited duty the day after that. Oh, and my brother who was staying with us had a cold but a different one that we had been battling and my father was sick with an unknown illness but my mom thought it could be the flu (it turned out to be a UTI). Clorox became my new best friend. But, aside from a lingering cough on my part, we seem to be finally wandering out of illness land. I am hoping for 1 solid week in which all 3 of us are actually healthy before we start the next round. Wish us luck.