Family - Pocketful of Joules

My Life is a TV Show

Do you ever feel like the people on TV are reflecting your life back at you?

I mean, of course we watch television shows that are relatable, but I watched two different shows on Monday night that mirrored my feelings right back at me. Totally weird, right?

First, I was watching How I Met Your Mother (as I’ve been known to do). Lily recently had a baby and has been struggling a bit with her transition into motherhood. In Monday’s episode, she confesses that she thinks she’s a bad mother because sometimes she just gets so overwhelmed with her responsibilities that she wants to just run away.

Then, about a half hour later on Bones, Angela says almost the exact same thing. She misses the old version of herself – the version who would walk through museums and enjoy the artwork. She’s not happy with who she currently is and isn’t quite sure how to change things.

I’m there.
So incredibly there.

This past weekend was HARD. All last week I was dealing with my own sickness, my husband’s cold and Jack’s hospital stay with bronchiolitis and RSV. Oh yeah, and working on top of that. All I wanted for the weekend was to curl up on the couch with a book for an hour or so. Just an hour would have been fine.

Of course, this didn’t happen. Jack decided that naps were for chumps and Travis had planned a full weekend working in the garage with a friend. Leaving me to be Supermom for another two days.

I was done. DONE.

I was frustrated and angry and just all around DONE with the situation. At one point, I wanted to walk out into the garage, hand Jack to my husband, and get in my truck and leave.

I don’t know where I would have gone, but it would have been somewhere where I only had to worry about myself. I didn’t though. Instead I unleashed my fury on Travis when he came inside. Which apparently worked, because he then took me out to dinner and gave me a massage.

I’m feeling better this week. Everyone is almost totally healthy again (knock on wood), which brings my stress level down a half-turn. I also booked a beach vacation for March, which gives me some relaxation to look forward to. Will this cure me forever? Um, probably not. Motherhood is HARD FREAKING WORK and sometimes you need a break.

It’s nice to see them dealing with the same issues on my favorite TV shows though.

It makes me feel like a little less of a failure. Because when I take a step back and look at it with clear eyes, I know I’m not a failure. I’m actually a pretty awesome mom. But I’m also Joules, a person other than a mom. Sometimes I just need to remember that.

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In & Out of the Hospital

Those of you following along on Facebook already know this, but we ended up taking another trip to the ER on Monday.

Jack’s wheezing had gotten progressively worse and my mom was concerned that it had turned into stridor. Long story short – Jack was diagnosed with bronchiolitis and RSV. His oxygen levels were low and dropping, so he was admitted into the hospital Monday night.

We were given a room with a crib that looked like a baby cage in it and a small couch which converted to a miniature bed. I spent the entire night fighting with Jack to keep the oxygen hoses up his nose.

It pretty much went like this:

Step 1: Hoses are inserted into nose. Jack cries so hard that his overtired body relaxes and he starts dozing off. He sleeps for 2 – 5 minutes.

Step 2: In his half-asleep state he swipes at his nose with his hand, ripping the oxygen tubes out. His oxygen levels lower, causing the machine alarms to go off. Jack wakes up fully and starts crying.

Step 3: I jump off the mini bed, lower the side of the baby cage which makes a huge squeak each time, wrestle Jack into submission to reinsert the hose. Soothe him back into a half-asleep state. Put up the crib railing {SQUEAK} and shove my arm through the rails so that I can continue patting him into sleepytime. Slowly walk away and get back into bed.

Step 4: Repeat

So that was life from about 9:00 pm – 2:00 am.

Then, it was time for another nebulizer treatment so I put Jack in my mommy ninja hold and kept him restrained while holding the dragon-shaped apparatus over his face for 10 – 15 minutes while he screamed.

At this point, I begged the nurse for something to knock him out so that he would just get OVER that hump of being half-asleep and finally get some actual sleep. I asked for anything – Tylenol, Benadryl, a tranquillizer dart to the neck…whatever! She came back a few minutes later with both Tylenol and Benadryl and we dosed him up and waited for it to kick in.

Finally, Jack fell asleep.

For about 20 minutes. Then, he went back to trying to scratch his nose and pulling out the oxygen hosing. We tried the crib, we tried the mini bed with me, and we tried the crib again. I finally got him to sleep on top of me like a scarf around 3:00 am. Of course, that is when MY sickness started kicking in even more and the next few hours consisted us sleeping together, me slowly extracting myself from his hold, me vomiting in the bathroom, rinsing mouth/brushing teeth, return to bed and scooch myself back under him. Rinse and repeat. Oh wait, there was random kicking and punching from him too. I can’t forget about that because I’ll most likely find some odd bruises in a few days and wonder how in the heck I got them.

We woke up around 7:00 and spent the day just hanging out around the hospital room. To get a good idea on how that went, try to imagine keeping an almost one year old confined to a small space for more than 20 minutes. Yeah, it went that well. Luckily, Jack went down for a nice, long nap around 10:00 and my mom arrived with some small toys for him to play with.

Even better, when the doctor stopped by to check him out she said that we were allowed to leave the hospital that day! It took a few more hours for us to get released, pack up all our crap, drive to pick up his new nebulizer prescription and get the little guy home. Pretty much the second we got in the door I stripped us of our germy clothes and gave him a nice, long bath. He then went down for a nap in his own (non-cage-like) crib and I took the world’s longest shower.

I’m back at work today and my husband is home with Jack. They have a pediatrician appointment scheduled for this afternoon, so hopefully she sees enough improvement that we can cut back on the nebulizer treatments (I had to give him one at 2:30 am, which made my morning alarm clock hurt a little more than usual).

Jack is doing so much better now though and I really appreciate all of the kindness from everyone on Facebook, Twitter, my email box and in real life. Except for those two people who “unliked” my Facebook page in the midst of my hospital updates. You guys suck.

Everyone else is fantastic though, so do me a little favor – wrap your arms around yourself and give yourself a big hug from me. Don’t do this in public though, that would be weird.

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Let’s Just Be Awesome

Do you guys watch How I Met Your Mother (or HIMYM for the cool kids)? I got into it a few years ago and did that thing where you rent all the old seasons on DVD and watch them back-to-back. Then, once you catch up with real time you get all angry that the episodes only come on one at a time. Yeah, I did that and became totally addicted.

Travis and I are totally a version of Lily and Marshall. Travis is Marshall and I’m Lily, of course, even though I typed it the other way. For some reason saying it in the order of “Marshall and Lily” sounds weird to me. I actually do have a lot of Marshall qualities, especially the singing about everything as you do it. I’m going to blame that on Jack though because it’s helping with his word development. Yeah. But there I go again, wandering off another path…

Back on track – I love me some HIMYM* and we usually have a few episodes waiting on our TiVo at all times. One of my favorite characters is Barney, the male slut who has a very super-high opinion of himself. Much like me on a good day, Barney likes to use the word “AWESOME” way too much, which makes me like him even more.

Which is why I’d like someone to buy me this poster:

We all have crappy days. Yesterday was a pretty bad one for me because I had to take Jack to the emergency room (third trip in 10 ½ months if you’re keeping track) for yet another case of croup and stridor. I’m hoping that he grows out of this phase soon, because frankly it’s hard on all of us.

Each time when I leave the hospital, I’m covered in a thin and sticky coat of gloominess for the rest of the day. I have a mini freakout over the fact that we sat in a germ-filled hospital room for hours and pretty much strip everyone down for baths as soon as we enter the house. I then mark another hospital bill in my expense book, which makes me thank the university gods for providing me with awesome health insurance.

I shouldn’t be gloomy though because most of the time Jack is a healthy, incredibly happy and bright little baby/almost toddler. For a baby born at 31 ½ weeks, it’s incredible that he has hardly had any issues at all. A couple trips to the hospital and needing to wrestle him to the ground to use his dreaded inhaler isn’t that bad in the scheme of things.

So, sometimes I just need to suck it up and… well, BE AWESOME.

*For those of you who are poo-pooing this season in their head while reading this post, I agree that this season has not been the best. But even a crappy episode of HIMYM is better than a lot of the stupid TV out there!

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