Mommy's turn for the stomach bug

Sunday night, not long before bedtime, I noticed my stomach felt funny. It was one of those feelings where you can't quite decide if you're hungry, or too full, or queasy, or have an embedded burp, or what. And since my belly is getting pretty huge with the pregnancy these days, I also had the option to consider that maybe the baby was just pressing on my insides oddly. I ended up deciding to eat a couple slices of toast to see if that would fix anything. It didn't make any change, but I went to bed, all the same.

And then, yep, I woke up at 2:30am. Tummy still felt a little funny. I sat up, and literally had an internal conversation with myself, trying to convince myself that no, I was not, in fact, queasy. But telling myself so didn't make a difference, and soon I was running for the bathroom. Barely made it in time. Thank goodness we got our bed up off the floor, huh? Takes a lot less time to get from bed to bathroom these days. Perfect timing for that change, I guess!

Jesse had been thinking about calling in sick the next day, anyway, since his throat was feeling sore and his head was bothering him most of the day on Sunday. Those are his typical precursor symptoms for getting sick (even if "sick" only means a moderate cold). So when he heard me puking in the bathroom, he decided for sure that he'd be staying home on Monday. I threw up a couple more times overnight, and a couple times the next day, though I felt a tad queasy constantly until around 4pm on Monday. It seemed worse, for sure, if I stood up or sat up, so I pretty much just stayed in bed, unless necessary, all morning and afternoon. It was certainly a wonderful thing that Jesse stayed home. He took care of what the kids needed, and I got generally uninterrupted rest. When I finally got out of bed, I sat at the computer for a little while to catch up on email and things, and after a while felt very cold. Which was odd to me, since the entire time I was laying in bed, I was definitely on the too-warm side of things.

I ended up laying down on the couch with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. Jacob decided he wanted to snuggle, with a blanket of his own, so I ended up with 2 blankets covering me. Jacob left when Jesse offered them some dinner. I fell asleep, buried by 2 blankets, and when I woke up, I knew I had a fever. My face felt incredibly flushed, the way it would feel if I were terribly embarrassed and blushing like mad. I didn't take my temperature until a couple hours later, but when I did, it was 100.5. Not a terrible fever, but enough to make me uncomfortable. I spent my evening watching movies and laying sprawled on the couch in a vain attempt to feel a bit cooler.

Since I went to bed still sporting a fever, I decided we'd better cancel our Tuesday morning plans. Melinda was so saddened by that. We were supposed to go to her friend Kate's house for "circle time", with rhymes, finger plays, and simple preschool type games. It's been on the calendar for a week now, and she's really been looking forward to it. But I couldn't justify possibly spreading a stomach bug + fever to other kids and mommies. I ended up sleeping pretty well that night (despite having slept most of Monday!), and I appear to be healthy again. As perhaps was manifest by my ravenous hunger this morning, hehe! I really ate barely anything yesterday - a container of yogurt, a couple nectarines, an orange, and a few handfuls of dry cereal. Otherwise I just tried to drink enough water (and eventually Gatorade, since the water became unappealing) to keep myself hydrated.

Jesse was just so awesome on Monday. I worried all day long that he wouldn't be feeling very good, himself, and then had kids to take care of on top of it. But at the end of the day, he said, "It sure was nice to stay home today!!" And I said, "Really?! Even with having to take care of everything by yourself?" "Sure!" he said, "I wasn't doing much anyway. Mostly playing video games all day!" LOL. But you know, he did all the diaper changes, all the feeding of the kids, ran to the store to get extra stuff for me, and did his best at keeping the kids out of my hair and relatively quiet. Plus, he did bedtime all on his own, and it was great fun to listen to that. He told them the story of the Three Little Pigs, in his own words, with voices and everything. Jacob was absolutely hysterical with laughter. I couldn't help but grin, from the other room. And when it came time to give them bedtime kisses, Melinda asked for Mommy after they got kisses from Daddy. Jesse told them I wouldn't be coming in, since I was too sick, and then proceeded to give them kisses "from Mommy", with a high-pitched voice. Melinda giggled and accused, "But Daddy, you don't look like Mommy!" I heard Jesse say, "Oh! But how do I look like Mommy? Do I stick my belly out really far?" Man, I almost burst out laughing at that one. I know Melinda did, a little bit!

Now, after all that chance to rest through an illness yesterday, if only House Elves really existed, and decided to visit our house. It's a little bit of a wreck, and I don't wanna fix it!