More than Spit-Up

It’s been a long time my friends! I wish I could tell you that I took a 6-week vacation to Hawaii and now I’m tropically tan, rested and ready to conquer the world. Instead, we are gratefully pregnant with baby girl number three— but sadly, with my third round of Hyperemesis Gravidarm (HG). For those of you unfamiliar with this medical condition that sounds like I only have months to live, it is a complication of pregnancy characterized by intractable nausea, vomiting, and dehydration that affects about .5-2% of pregnant women.  This condition was made famous by Kate Middleton, who despite this horrific ordeal is still managing to pop out little royals like they alone are in charge of repopulating the Earth. It’s really only a ailment fit for a princess because then at least you have dozens of nanny’s, special cooks etc. to help with your existing children and ridiculous food cravings like caprese salad at 9am or a peanut butter smoothie for dinner.

All of my efforts this past 14 weeks have been put towards barely surviving mothering my daughters and running to and from every toilet, sink, and garbage can in a 50-mile radius. Don’t let slap-stick comedy fool you; throw up in real life, is not a lot of thing-- including funny. 

It is not morning sickness.

Almost all pregnant women get some form of morning sickness and it not just limited to the AM hours. Really it should be renamed mourning sickness where you mourn your new normal of feeling like you simultaneously want to nap while murdering your co-worker who ate tuna for lunch and hasn’t showered since Tuesday. It is around 3 or 4 weeks of queasiness with occasional vomiting. Compared to what I have; that sounds like a Hawaiian vacation.

It is not a time for suggestions or comments.

Have you tried motion sickness bands, morning sickness lozenges, vitamin B6, acupuncture? 

When you are sick over a dozen times in a day, yes I have tried absolutely everything. You’d be amazed how many people have used these last 3 months to tell me just how much they personally hate vomiting.

It is my least favorite sickness to have. Ugh, I just hate it.

You are not an anomaly. With the exception of professional hot dog eaters, absolutely everyone, including me, hates throwing up.

It is not a time to tell your vomiting stories.

Please don’t tell me about that one time you tried the fish tacos out of a food truck in Fort Lauderdale and got food poisoning from both ends for 2 days. Not only does the idea of fish tacos actively bring my breakfast up into my mouth, but now I can’t stop picturing you on the toilet.

The irony is not lost on me that the title of my blog is Wit and Spit-Up and I’ve accepted that bodily fluids are simply a part of my everyday life. I knew the gamble we were taking purposefully wanting a third when I’ve had this condition with my past two-- however this is simply how my body creates the world's most wonderful daughters. And so, I look forward to the days when we are back to the wit and done with the spit-up.

Two Rhymes with Poo

An unexpected perk of having my children 20 months apart was recently my 4-year-old, taught my 2-year-old how to use the potty. In fact, they both taught each other something new. Let me start from the beginning.

I fully intended, in my life before kids, that I would be a research-based parent. I’d join support groups, read self-help books with titles like “Harmonizing with your Child through Love and Understanding”. I’d pull lessons from Free Range Parenting, Helicopter, and whatever magical pressure/love combo that turns so many Asian children into concert violinists and mathematicians. Turns out I’m so busy being a parent every minute of every day that I don’t have the energy to research theories on child-rearing. I simply show them love and teach compassion and cross my fingers that no body asks me to fly to Mexico for a Spring Break wedding on their high school Senior trip. 

Several months ago, I tried 2 days of undies-only for Maddie, and during that time she demonstrated her non-readiness by upping my laundry loads by 200%. That was my one-and-only-potty-training move I used with Charlotte—so I decided to turn to my 4-year-old for guidance. During the next few weeks my girls became fascinating by the bathroom.

What are you doing in there, Mom? Are you pooping? Can I see? Can I sit on your lap?

Sigh. I look forward to the day where I can instill a closed-door bathroom policy, with assurance that my kids won’t use that time to baby powder the dogs.  

On the plus side, Maddie was gaining interest and so I capitalized on this by overly rewarding and praising Charlotte. Charlotte at this point still struggled to consistently go #2 in the potty. Then one day, Maddie went #2 in the potty and my excitement was shockingly close to how I felt at my college graduation. Except I had done nothing. Then this happened: 

               “Look Mommy, I showed Maddie how to pee in the potty!”

               “Look Mommy, now Charlotte does poopy like me!”

               Somehow, in a weekend, they solved each other’s bathroom dilemmas all while I did very little besides cheerlead and provided toilet paper from the sidelines. Not that it isn’t work—I’ve never "mommied" harder than the 5am wakeup call, to my pantless children each carrying their full potties, while I feigned Disneyland excitement levels, as they present me with their morning duties.

Four Fish Funerals

One of my vivid memories as a child was burying our fish in the backyard and then continually going to dig him back up to see what would happen. I assumed death was like some sort of magic trick and Gilly’s body would simply disappear and then reappear in the clouds, in heaven. It is because of this experience we are a flushing family, through and through. As I shared last week, we took the plunge into purchasing goldfish for the girls. I am going to spoil the ending and reveal that we’ve had 4 fish funerals in exactly one week.  

It began when I went upstairs to drop off a load of clean laundry and then happened upon my youngest sitting around a puddle of water and stroking Grandpa Fish ever so tenderly in her small hands. I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried to catch a fish, but those suckers are slippery. If I wasn’t so completely horrified, I might be a little impressed by her fishing abilities. The next morning my husband noticed Peggy Fish was starting to float awfully suspiciously and so he primed the kids that she might be going on a vacation very soon, and likely out of solidarity/being cuddled by my 2-year-old, Grandpa Fish, also went belly up within an hour.

The girls went off to Nana and Papa’s house and I replaced the fish with Peggy 2.0 and Grandpa 2.0 and my children were none the wiser. The very same manager sold me two more at full price because while I will do most anything for my kids, carrying a bag of dead fish in my Kate Spade purse is not one of them. Meanwhile I have got to hand it to Mr. Petco Manger for knowing his sh** because I did have to replace the water everyday due to an abundance of feces, which between my children and my dogs, I need more poop in my life, like I need more judgement from the employees at Petco.

Within 2 days we had lots more hands-inside-the-water-incidents and one more unexplained death. The final straw was, well, I do not want to call it murder, but let’s just say two-year-olds don’t understand that fish don’t drink orange juice. We gave them proper goodbyes down the porcelain expressway and my children learned about bigger life lessons and I learned I simply do not need any more non-human responsibilities. I’ve retired our fish bowl safely away in the closet because while my kids easily accept that all fishies go to heaven, this is simply 4 flushes too many for this Mama.