I can't believe how much bigger Z seems in the last two months. Sense of humor, really high jumps, quite a few sentences, and she's found her "no." And I find it so adorable that I actually enjoy each and every one.
I'm actually finding pretty much everything adorable these days. I have to play it cool in public, so as not to be one of those cloying parents, grinning ear to ear, muttering under her breath, "she said "hi," wasn't that precious?!"
Part of this is that this is just a really cute age. The ornery smile, the dimple. The run while laughing. Part of it is a bit of Mama trauma I need to work through. The upside to something scary for me is thankfulness and appreciation.
I haven't talked about what happened because it was too much, but I'm hoping telling the tale in brief bits will be cathartic :).
P and Z got really sick with the flu this last month. 104-105 fevers. And in the night (just after E went to work) Z's fever rocketed and she had a seizure. Fortunately, she was laying on me, I had just taken her temp. I instantly recalled Superman's parents mentioning his babyhood febrile seizures, but to be honest, in the dark of the night, this familiarity wasn't too much solace. As I swept her up to take her to the bathtub (what they did in their story) she went limp. Totally limp, and her sweet little form dangling from my arms was terrifying. I called to a sleeping Phoenix to call 911 (I had magically just installed a 911 app on my phone and talked him through it the day before). He tried, but the poor, feverish kid was like a deer in the headlights, flipping through the phone in sleepy shock. I'll never forget his voice to the dispatcher, his fear, what he said, it will haunt me forever. Sweet Z was choking, she was not breathing at all and her lack of sound and movement once her seizure stopped was horrifying. I started mouth to mouth and yelled my address to the 911 guy. He wanted to chat - so many questions, but I had to nicely tell him to piss off after he had my address and knew that a 1 year old was choking. All of me was focused on Z and keeping her here.
Afterwards, I was impressed by how realistically the movies nail the whole CPR-puking-to-breathing scenario. A little more mouth to mouth and I turned her to her side as she vomited again and again. And she breathed, and cried.
There was a swarm of men in my house soon after. I turned down a trip in the ambulance, thinking the last thing two flu stricken kids needed was an ER full of germs. They checked out Z, as much as the sobbing child would let them, and left just as the sun came up.
One haunting realization with this was that the people trained to help aren't there when you need them. The ER docs and the paramedics, they don't live here. And while they we fast, they wouldn't have been fast enough. And going to the hospital post trauma is pointless. (I needed post trauma therapy of a different kind :)
But Z did end up taking a ride in an ambulance a few hours later. Superman came home and we both lay cuddling Z's finally sleeping form. But her fever wouldn't stay down with medicine and when it rushed up again our doc told us to call 911. Again.
Come to find out, I have a big block against calling 911. I mean, when Z wasn't breathing I didn't hesitate. But she didn't seem That Emergent to me. Another seizure wouldn't kill her and riding in an ambulance wouldn't *prevent* one. Understandably, we couldn't strap her in her recumbent car seat and me drive her, as we'd already found out how seizures and choking suck. Blech. So off we went, E staying home with a horribly sick P. Thank gawd for Superman.
I wondered for days afterward how long the awful images and immense thankfulness would stick with me. How long before they fade like a scar. I haven't reached that point yet :) Ever since E was diagnosed with cancer, I've had a really heightened level of thanks that he just IS. And that certainly spread to my kids. But this took it up another notch and I find myself giving silent thanks every day that I still have Z.
Soooo, long story short, if my blog about how stupendously fabulous my offspring are wasn't cloying enough before, well, watch out ;). I'll try to not set off gag reflexes too often :)
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