I need a vacation to recover from my vacation
I just got back this morning from spending the last two weeks (three full weekends) with my best friend/sister-in-law at our mother-in-law's house in New Hampshire. They currently live in Barcelona and her husband (my brother-in-law, as in K's brother) needed to come to the Boston area for a work related trip and decided to bring his wife and child along so she and I could spend some time together staying with our mother in law (where there's plenty of room for all of us to stay) and our husbands could come up from Boston during the three weekends we planned to be there. I was really looking forward to this as I really don't spend much time with friends in general these days and this friend and I go way back and she has a baby a little older than Lucas. I had visions of watching movies that we both love together while watching our children, going out to lunch if the babies' schedules allowed, and doing one girl's afternoon or night out while our husbands watched the babies.
As luck would have it, my brother-in-law got some kind of stomach flu virus the day after they'd arrived and then a few days later my sister-in-law and her baby had it simultaneously (just imagine trying to take care of your own child's diarrhea and vomiting between your own trips to the bathroom) for about three days, then I got it, and then K and his mother got it exactly one week after the virus had begun its rounds. By luck or by the natural wisdom of breastfeeding, Lucas did not get the virus. They say that if a breastfeeding mother gets sick, there's a good chance that instead of passing on the virus to the baby, she passes on the anti-bodies her body has created in its attempt to fight the virus. I don't know if this is what happened but I'm just glad he didn't get sick.
What was really weird about this particular illness was that long past the diarrhea and vomiting was over, nausea dragged on and on for days on after. So, we all spent a lot of time just feeling shitty and not hungry and loafing around the house. Lucas chose these two weeks to get up at 6AM every single morning, despite the fact that I've known him to be quite capable of getting up at 7AM and even later on more than one occasion.
To add onto that, my mother-in-law gave my niece a little peanut butter without thinking and it turns out she has a peanut allergy and K ended up having to drive my sister-in-law along with her baby to the ER where she was given benadryl and prescribed an epi-pen.
Anyway, it didn't really become fun until last Wednesday when I suddenly felt hungry again and, as we'd envisioned, we went out for lunch with our babies in tow and ate a proper meal. After that, things were good. We talked and watched movies while the babies napped, went out for lunch every day and Saturday afternoon, we left our babies with our husbands to go to the movies and that night had an amazing, summery, grilled dinner.
Now, I'm just feeling kind of blah as the post-vacation let down has come crashing down, compounded by the fact that it wasn't nearly as fun as I'd anticipated, leaving me wishing that I could give it another shot, this time sans illness.
As luck would have it, my brother-in-law got some kind of stomach flu virus the day after they'd arrived and then a few days later my sister-in-law and her baby had it simultaneously (just imagine trying to take care of your own child's diarrhea and vomiting between your own trips to the bathroom) for about three days, then I got it, and then K and his mother got it exactly one week after the virus had begun its rounds. By luck or by the natural wisdom of breastfeeding, Lucas did not get the virus. They say that if a breastfeeding mother gets sick, there's a good chance that instead of passing on the virus to the baby, she passes on the anti-bodies her body has created in its attempt to fight the virus. I don't know if this is what happened but I'm just glad he didn't get sick.
What was really weird about this particular illness was that long past the diarrhea and vomiting was over, nausea dragged on and on for days on after. So, we all spent a lot of time just feeling shitty and not hungry and loafing around the house. Lucas chose these two weeks to get up at 6AM every single morning, despite the fact that I've known him to be quite capable of getting up at 7AM and even later on more than one occasion.
To add onto that, my mother-in-law gave my niece a little peanut butter without thinking and it turns out she has a peanut allergy and K ended up having to drive my sister-in-law along with her baby to the ER where she was given benadryl and prescribed an epi-pen.
Anyway, it didn't really become fun until last Wednesday when I suddenly felt hungry again and, as we'd envisioned, we went out for lunch with our babies in tow and ate a proper meal. After that, things were good. We talked and watched movies while the babies napped, went out for lunch every day and Saturday afternoon, we left our babies with our husbands to go to the movies and that night had an amazing, summery, grilled dinner.
Now, I'm just feeling kind of blah as the post-vacation let down has come crashing down, compounded by the fact that it wasn't nearly as fun as I'd anticipated, leaving me wishing that I could give it another shot, this time sans illness.