Emily and Sarah - one week old
While I am still gaga over my sweet baby girls, reality has hit hard these past few weeks. Ever since these babies were born, every person in our family has been sick at least once - some two or three times. We'd had a relatively healthy winter with very few colds or coughs or stomach bugs - until the day I got home from the hospital with the twins.
As Andrew and I pulled the car into the driveway, Isaac, who was so excited to have us home, came running to the car and said, "Can I hold the babies!?" followed by a loud sniff and a terrible cough. YUCK. The poor boy had to spend the next several days wearing a medical mask and practically bathing in hand sanitizer.
That was only the beginning of the illnesses at our house. Every child had some sort of upper respiratory infection, including a fever, a runny nose and a hacking cough. Sarah and Emily were sequestered in our bedroom and our poor other kids weren't even allowed in there.
Henry was sick for a few days with fever and cough, and on the third day, when I thought he would be well enough to go to school, he somehow climbed out of bed and realized he couldn't walk. His legs were cramping and killing him and he shuffled stiff-legged, like a 90-year old man as he tried to walk. Finally, it was too painful for him to walk, so he got down on the floor and commando crawled across the kitchen floor.
I was pretty nervous as I helped him, wondering what was wrong with my boy. At first, Andrew thought perhaps he was dehydrated, but that wasn't it. After a little research, we realized that he had benign acute childhood myositis, a condition that occurs usually in young boys, after a fever and cold, and makes it extremely painful to walk for few days. It was crazy. Here I had one-month old twins, and my seven-year-old son couldn't walk. It was such a relief when he was back to his normal self a few days later.
It was only a couple of days later that Andrew was at work and I was up around 3:30am feeding the babies. Suddenly I heard a noise coming from the boys room, followed by the unmistakable sound of vomiting. UGH. I set the baby down and ran to the bathroom to find Isaac. He had jumped out of his bed feeling sick, and run to the bathroom just in time to hurl all over the TOP of the toilet lid - and the floor, and the side of the tub. Awesome. (Note to Isaac: next time, just throw up in the tub, or the garbage, or even the sink.)
While I was in helping Isaac get cleaned up and back to bed, I heard Lucy from her room say something about throw-up. At first I wondered if she had be awakened by Isaac, but I quickly ran to her room just in time to see her throw-up all over her bed and onto the floor. Of course, seconds later, both babies started to cry and all I could do was text Andrew and laugh. Throw-up all over a bathroom and a bedroom and two babies crying at 4:00 in the morning, what's not funny about that?
Anyway, eventually, everyone got feeling better - but not before both babies caught little sniffles themselves. It was a long six weeks dealing with all the illnesses, and kids staying home from school, and it was rough way to be dragged from my blissful baby bubble into the reality of caring for seven kids - in sickness and in health.
Still at the end of those sick days, when everyone was in bed for the night and the only sound throughout the house was the echo of hacking coughs coming from sleeping children, it was pure joy to go into my room and snuggle my babies and for at least a few hours, be back inside that glorious, heavenly, baby bubble.
