Dr. Mom

The life of a housewife includes many job descriptions. Some are glamorous, like spousal stylist, or chef extraordiaire. Some titles are not so glamorous, such as toilet scrubber or booger-nose wiper. But there are some titles that would really rake in the money in the "real world," such as CPA, Executive Personal Assistant, Chaufer, or, as the role I'm taking on this week, Doctor. You can call me Dr. Mom.

To be fair, when a mom takes the persona of Doctor, she really is also playing Nurse, 24-hour Caregiver, P.A., Candy Striper, Labratory Assistant, and Janitor. I'm sure there are other titles I've left out, but you get the idea. And of course, this goes for working mothers as well as the SAH moms.

So Saturday we come home from church, and without any warning, Sofia gets sick. I'll spare you the details, but we'll just say it was several kinds of sick. Still don't know exactly what happened, but it wasn't fun. And it wasn't a 24-hour bug, because she got a fever that night which stayed all day Sunday, too. So then she started complaining about her neck hurting. She cried when I made her touch her chin to her chest. So I basically panicked, and after calling the 24-hour nurse hotline, got my insurance card ready to go to the ER. Good times. Luckily, I checked her temp again before leaving, and her fever had broken. She also had started perking up, acting like herself again. Thank the Lord it wasn't meningitis.

Monday, Sofia's feeling mostly better. I'm thinking, "Good deal, this wasn't so bad. Ha. " Tuesday morning, Sam has a fever, higher than Sofia's was. Actually, he woke up at 12:30am with a fever of as high as 104.9. Yikes! Luckily, it came down pretty fast with water & Motrin. Two hours later, and his fever has broken, so hopefully he's over the worst. But by my estimation, Ben should be coming down with something on Thursday morning. That's just how these things work.

The icing on the cake is that the sick kids are grumpy and needy all day long (I don't blame them--I'm that way when I'm sick too, but my mom is no longer in-house), but also wake up a lot at night. Notice it's 3am right now. This equals a very tired mommy. I've had to skip fun things this week, like opera night at the local vege restaurant, and the zoo with friends. All so I can stay home and not earn a paycheck while I take care of the children's wing of the Fernandes Medical Center.

My intention is not to complain about every minute of my life. In fact, there's some sick pleasure (no pun intended... well, maybe) in having a moderately feverish and lethargic baby want to do nothing but lay on your chest all day.... just cuddle. That's good times. Although it would be better without the fever/lethargy.

I'm telling my husband to watch for the bill. I'm no cheap doc.