February Blahs

Other than miscarrying his twin, I had a picture perfect pregnancy. Zero nausea. Low blood pressure. Nice blood work. No scares. No glucose in the pee tests. No gestational diabetes. No causes for alarm. Stellar screening. Healthy baby's heartbeat during midwifery checkups. My appetite was immaculate: I didn't crave hotdogs, potato chips, ice cream or seven layer cakes, but what I couldn't get enough of was fruit and I ate plenty of it. I felt absolutely amazing. It wasn't until close to my 7th month that I got sick. And it was nothing to do with the baby and everything to do with my own stupidity. I had booked myself a week off in February last year and planned to drive to Quebec to visit my friends who lived in Montreal. Alone. At 27 weeks along. I could barely reach the steering wheel with that burgeoning belly!

When I left early in the morning, I was still in perfect health, pretty much. My trip was delayed by a day, but I still set out. Just what I thought would be a 6-hour drive ended up taking me 9 hours and I became ill half way there. I debated turning the car around, but instead decided to stick it out.

Bad, bad idea. Always, ALWAYS listen to your gut, and in this case, I had no excuse. I even had a little baby in my gut telling me it was the wrong decision. But learn the hard way (once again) I must.

I ended up spending the 3 days at my friend's place in Montreal going through three of their kleenex boxes and lying under their blankets in their master bedroom. It was awful. The drive back was equally horrendous. I finally made a healthy decision to stay overnight halfway back in Kingston because a snowstorm had begun the morning I left. Spent the night in a room at the Holiday Inn developing a fever and then making my way late at night to a local hospital to make sure that my baby was doing okay in utero. He was. My nose, however, looked like it was going to fall off since I'd blown it redder than Rudolph's.

So it should be no surprise that (once again), after a perfect flu-free autumn and christmas holidays watching everyone around us get sick as dogs (and admittedly gloating about it) save for one week back in November when my son had some diarrhea, here it is February again and we are both under the weather! And I don't care about what I'm going through, but it is sheer torture to watch my little laddie cough, sneeze and wheeze and try to wipe his runny nose the moments I'm not swooping in with a kleenex myself. He's so LITTLE. He doesn't understand what's happening, why he's so dopey, why he's so tired and why his "widdle node huwts". We spent 7 hours in the emergency room of a local hospital yesterday because he had problems nursing since his nose was stuffed and he couldn't breathe with my boob in his mouth and I was frantically worried he was becoming dehydrated. Talk about SAD! My sonshine is behind the clouds right now! We both need some Vitamin D, bigtime.

Whoever invented the premise behind Valentine's Day knew what they were doing. Choose the saddest, most blah month of winter to celebrate love because there is nothing else going for February, really. And even Valentine's Day can add to the depression of an already horrible month if you're feeling unloved or don't have that special someone in your life. (Luckily, I am made to feel loved every waking day since my son's birth so I escape the horrors of this Hallmark holiday this year, finally!)

This month always sneaks up on you and attacks as if from behind. It's like Napoleon. It's the shortest month of the year, but it still packs quite a suckerpunch. And generally, I am not one to complain about anything and generally, nothing would move me to do it 'cept the pain of watching my wee son in misery.

February. Blah flu-bug! Call me Scrooge but I only love it during leap years. Right now, quite like my nose every five seconds, this month blows...

Music: Under the Weather, KT Tunstall