The Portugal Saga, Part III: And It Gets Better
Originally published at Welcome To The Dollhouse. You can comment here or there.
pologies, apologies, apologies, my dear friends and patient readers. It was not my intent to make this story go on three times longer than the actual vacation. Unfortunately, there is much going on in real life that distracts me from recounting this saga. Not the least of which is the 7200 layoffs going on in our place of employment. Yes, I am pretty damn wigged out, but right now, lets talk about something else.
When I left off in part 2, I was just being vomited upon by my dear daughter in the restaurant. This happened not once, not twice, but perhaps three or four times by the time AdoringHusband returned with his desserts. I tried to catch the vomitus in my napkin, but the child seemed to think that I was secretly trying to smother her with it every time I brought it near her face and pitched a fit. As such, there was more vomit on me than in the napkin.
The minute he got to the table, I looked at him and said, “We’ve got to go.”
“What?” He asked, “Is Zara really tired?”
I gave him a look that said, is there a moron in front of me? “Zara just started vomiting! Didn’t you happen to notice that I’m sitting here covered in vomit?”
He blathered about not being able to see me and oh my god is she OK as we gathered up the now crying Zara and took her back to our room. Now here’s where it gets really difficult being both a pediatrician and a mom. On one hand you know what to do for a simple case of the pukes, but on the other hand you start to run through all the what ifs. What if she gets worse? What if she starts spiking fevers? What if she gets dehydrated and needs an IV? What if this is the beginning of something much worse? What if what if what if? It does set your mind aspinnin’. And then you have AdoringHusband there looking at you expecting you to handle this. He’s like, this is your show. What do we do. So the onus is on you to, as they say, act like you know. I had to stop tripping and think.
OK, let’s do a quick assessment. Fever? No. Rash? No. Appearance? Alert and appropriate. Likelihood of badness: minimal. My goal: maintain hydration until whatever the hell this is either resolves or declares itself. And oh shit, we’re on vacation.
I got Zara cleaned up and into her pajamas. Of course tonight, she goes immediately to sleep. It figures. But when I checked on her maybe 1 to 2 hours later, she was still sleeping, but had thrown up all over herself and the bed. I have no idea why didn’t hear anything. What is this silent vomiting?
Her bed looked like some abstract painting with tomato red blotches dotting the white sheets. Yet she looked so peaceful. So here’s the decision point. Do you leave your child sleeping peacefully in vomit or do you wake her up and piss her off to clean her? I chose the latter option. Ms. Zara was not happy.
She wakes up retching but is bringing up nothing but a small bit of liquid. I get her some water in her sippy cup and give her a few swallows. It stays down for all of 30 seconds. This means I have to give her less. So now I have to go in to mean mommy mode and not give her as much as she wants. Ugh. I let her have one sip and take the cup away. Zara is (not happy) cubed. She cries and then she retches. This of course freaked out AdoringHusband who does not like to see his little one upset. He then decides to give her her sippy cup and let her drink heavily. I glare at him.
“If she’s going to throw up anyway we might as well give her what she wants,” he says with all the authority of someone who got their medical degree from Google University. I continue to glare. Within 30 seconds she really throws up. And then she begins wailing loudly. He looks stricken. Ah chillax, I tell myself, stop glaring and start explaining what you’re doing. I then gave him a minicourse on the management of the vomiting child, letting him know that the main goal is to let the stomach rest and give the smallest amount of fluid that you can give that she’s able to keep down to prevent dehydration. And if even sips don’t stay down, then we let her keep sipping and drinking because dehydration is what will make us need to go to the hospital. The look on his face becomes so pained that I just reached out to him and said, “This is going to be a tough night.”
We get her cleaned up, throw towels over her dirty sheets in the bed and get her settled back into sleep. AdoringHusband goes to sleep as well but despite my fatigue I am unable to truly lose consciousness. It’s just as well because just about every hour I hear Zara start to retch and cry. And I launch myself over to her with a towel saying “let Mommy get the nasty vomit, Sweetie.” Somewhere around three or four in the morning there is no real vomit any more, but she just has dry heaves. Now she’s crying because she’s thirsty. And this wakes (finally) AdoringHusband.
I gave her a sip of water and tried to get her to eat one of those bland French cracker/cookies tasteless things that they had in the restaurant, but I don’t know what the problem was with those biscuits but girlfriend was having none of it. Even dying of hunger and thirst that was NOT acceptable. We finally settled on piece of banana and another sip of water. Each minifeed was followed by a 15 minute wait (with Zizi caterwauling the entire time). Happily everything stayed down. We turned the corner. By 6 AM there was no more vomiting, no more crying, and all of us finally fell asleep.
We managed to drag ourselves out of bed a few hours later. My head felt as if somebody had taken my brain and put it in a blender with some yogurt to make a smoothie. The good news was that Zara seemed to be fully recovered. Unfortunately, we didn’t dare take her to the morning session of Baby Club Med, not that we had awakened in time to do so, because we needed to see that we didn’t have a repeat performance of The Exorcist. But by the time for the afternoon session check in, we had resolved that she would go to Baby Club Med and we would spend the afternoon passed out in the sun.
She was not happy being left with her GOs for the afternoon but I can tell you that her parents felt like dancing a jig. We put on our bathing suits, went to the bar and got some nice drinky drinks, and lay out by the pool and finally began to have a vacation.
Here was Zara at Baby Club Med:
And here were her parents later that evening:
I know that I should have felt more guilt about Zizi’s being sad, but I tell you, the GOs LOVED her and fawned over her so much. And I knew that there was going to be some adjustment as she got used to them. But it did get better.
I was so determined for AdoringHusband and me to have some couples time that I signed Zara up for pajama club the next evening where she would be watched from 7:30 to 11:30 PM so that we could have an evening to ourselves. I made a reservation for a couples’ serenity spa package as our evening activity.
I think we were so giddy at having a dinner that didn’t involve entertaining Mercurial the fickle little dwarf that we had drinks before dinner and a whole bottle of wine with dinner that we arrived for our couple’s spa session at 9:30 nicely toasted. The first attendant for our spa treatments did not speak much English and we had some issues of communication mostly because I don’t think my brain translates very well when I’m inebriated… and I know AdoringHusband’s brain does not translate well period.
She gave us plush bathrobes and tiny little packages of paper things that at some point we were supposed to use to cover our genitals. That much I discerned, but first we were to completely undress for the spa bath. AdoringHusband and I walked into the candlelit room where more drinks awaited us and said, “whoa,” simultaneously. Two people were supposed to fit into that tub?! What became abundantly clear as AdoringHusband and I attempted to maneuver ourselves into this bathtub together was that either the French or Portuguese people who designed this tub were very, very, very small or we were clearly hugely fat Americans because good lord it was a tight fit. Water started to slosh over the sides, so we had to let some out. All we could do is laugh, while our attendant looked embarrassed. I don’t know if her embarrassment was just about being there or at witnessing such fat, obviously crazy, naked people.
AdoringHusband then decided to make up a new song that he would use for most of our two-hour spa session to regale all our attendants. It went something like this:
Je suis trop gros (I am too fat)
Je suis la lune (I am the moon)
Of course every time he launched into this ditty, it would prompt me to start apologizing to the attendants for his foolishness and hissing at him to tais-toi, alors!. And of course he would not listen to me because he knew that his singing embarrasses the hell out of me. If I could have blushed, I would have.
A new set of attendants ventured into the tub room to invite us over to the area for our next treatment. With great difficulty, we were able to pry ourselves out of the little tub and were ushered into the adjoining room for our massage and skin treatments. Yet, horror of horrors, our attendants discovered that we had neglected to put on the paper genital coverings that were in the tiny plastic packages we were given initially. Oh right! So we went back into the tub room while AdoringHusband continued to add new verses to his song that included bits about covering nut sacks and other madness and returned to have what would have been a great spa treatment except for the continued singing of Je Suis La Lune.
But the absolute best part of the night was when they put on some sort of mud or seaweed treatment and then told us to go into the shower to rinse it off. After the rinsing we were given another tiny plastic bag of genital covers. I managed to do well with getting mine on without any problem. However, AdoringHusband was not quite so fortunate.
“Shit, I broke it!” He exclaimed loudly, “I need another one.” Now this little g-string looking thing should not be so difficult for an adult to put on. His attendant went and found another one for him. The next thing you know, once again he is exclaiming, “shit, it broke again!” At this point, I’m laughing so hard that I am kneeling on the floor in the shower. The attendant then comes back with yet another tiny package. A few seconds later we get another, “shit! This one broke too!”
By now, my paper genital covers are almost no good because I nearly wet myself from laughing so hard. AdoringHusband doesn’t know whether to continue with his too fat riffs or to start with the Y-chromosome boasting like, my balls are too big to fit in this paper sack gambit. Me, I can’t even breathe I am laughing so hard. Finally, the attendant admonishes him saying this is her last one so don’t break it. And I know those two ladies are out there saying to themselves, if these are Americans, I want no part of them! I finally get enough oxygen in my lungs to tell him that instead of trying to put it on like he does underwear, perhaps he should gently step into both legs and pull it on slowly so that it doesn’t break. This seems to work.
During the last part of the treatment where we received a massage and skin conditioning service, AdoringHusband did finally shut the fuck up and I mellowed out so much that when 11 o’clock came, I wanted them to just put a blanket on me and leave me right there so that I could sleep. Instead, we managed to drag on our clothes and get on over to the Baby Club building where we liberated a sleeping Zara.
The next day, after dropping Zara in prison Baby Club, we decided to take a little excursion to Old Town Albufeira. This was a touristy, open section of the town with shops and restaurants that happened to be filled with Brits. We bought a few souvenirs, had a very leisurely lunch (mostly due to the very slow European service), and found a store where we could buy some of Melissa’s suggested Vinho Verde. We returned refreshed, singing the praises of Baby Med, carrying a packed 1/2 case of Vinho Verde to take with us on the plane.
On Friday, our last full day in Portugal, we decided to go down to the beach. AdoringHusband was being a little wiggy about the ocean (It’ll be cold!) so we ended up saving this mini-excursion for the last day. We ventured down the long stairway and made our way to an open area near the rock face. Zara looked so intrigued by everything she saw, from the beach umbrellas, to the abundant sand, to the ocean itself. We walked her down to where the waves lapped up near our feet. Initially she was a little unsure about this whole wave/water deal. Mommy waded into the water a little bit to show her that it was all good. It didn’t take her long to start digging getting splashed by the waves. Yet her overprotective father was doing his usual hovering, fearful that perhaps a sea monster was going to come and drag her out to sea.
You know that hackneyed and overused gushing that parents so often have to share about how wonderful it is to experience something through a child’s eyes? Before becoming a parent, you hear it so much that you begin to want to drive an icepick through your skull every time the words start to come out of someone’s mouth. But icepick or no, I’ve got to add to the annoying chorus. Watching her experience the wonder of the ocean, the feel of the sand, and the thrill of being somewhere new and different was so enormous for me. Everything started to feel okay. The stress, the tension, the oh-my-god-what-next feelings just melted right away there on that beach. Despite everything we had gone through, seeing her there in front of me, runny nose, sandy faced, made it all worthwhile. We were a family on vacation in Portugal and our daughter was experiencing and loving the ocean for the first time. How utterly amazing was that?
I’d found my calm. I’d reached a state of peace. This was what I needed.
And then it all went to shit the next day as we headed back to the US…