croup

Would you expect croup to look like this:

...or this?

Me neither. When Peanut had croup at the same age, she and I spent four straight days laying in bed, she alternately napping and nursing, me watching dvd's and keeping the milk available. I barely ate, being stranded in bed with her, and lost about 6lb in a week. It was intense.

But...have I mentioned that Bubby is constantly proving to be a very different baby from her older sister? She's been croupy for two days now, feverish by turns, barking like a seal and moody in the truest sense: she's been both up and down. As you can see, when she's up she's pretty delightful and energetic (it took 74 shots to get those three that aren't blurred from her constant, rapid movement). 'Up' doesn't last indefinitely, though. After playing for awhile, her croup starts to look like this:



Yeah, that's a little more the way I expect croup to look.

Meanwhile, Peanut currently looks like this:



My non-napper is on her second nap in as many days. She's warm and totally off of food and coughing. Between the two of them, the three of us were awake for two and a half hours in the middle of the night. There was a lot of coughing. Some drinking of water. Some trips to the bathroom. A little vomit.

It's fun times around here. Oh yes, fun, fun times.

february faces

'me' time

The people - well-meaning though they may in fact be - who tout the importance of  "taking some 'me' time" for the benefit of a mother's mental health, particularly in battling and surviving post-partum depression and anxiety, can take their advice and shove it.

Seriously. Not only is a little mommy time-out not going to cut it, here's a rare insight: the mommy time-out doesn't exist.

Does. not. exist.

Not every day.

Not when you're home alone with multiple children.

And the rare occasion on which Mommy does get some time to herself, maybe an hour or two on a weekend or evening? It's prefaced by various preparatory exercises and all too frequently follows up with kiddie drama upon her return.

Oh, yes. Very restoring, indeed.

I am sick to freaking death of being told I need a break. Ya think?! Hells yes, I need a break. Of course I need a damn break.

But here's the gigantic problem with this little kernel of advice:


it ends up blaming mothers.


Oh, you would feel so much better if you just learned to take a break once in a while.


And in the midst of blaming those mothers, those mothers who are struggling, who are fighting, who are frantically trying to keep their head above water, gasping for air,

it makes light of the problem. It makes light of a serious, debilitating mental health concern.

But yeah, I'll just go run a bath, nibble some bon bons, listen to my iPod, and totally relax. I'm sure I'll feel entirely restored after listening to my two children screeching for me for the half-hour* I'm in there.

I can't imagine why that wouldn't work...can you?

*During the twenty minutes it took me to write this, I had to stop Peanut from drawing on the coffee table, stop Bubby from breaking her teeth off on said coffee table, stop Peanut from tormenting her sister, stop Peanut from crumbling up a crayon in the living room, stop Bubby from ripping the power cord out of the laptop, replace text she deleted when she smacked the keyboard, and eventually unplug the whole thing and move to the dining room in order to get it finished.