Anxiety

*This was originally meant to be posted the first week of September but school started and life happened and then it was the end of the month.*

Anxiety.

That feeling when, after paying for a purchase, you turn to your child and they’re not where they were 30 seconds ago.  You look around you and you don’t see them.  That intense sensation before you spot them at a display just a few feet away.

Anxiety.

That feeling that you get when your mother doesn’t pick up the phone for the third day in a row.  That feeling in your stomach as you try to think of every reason why she’s not picking up and push away the thought of her lying dead in her home.

Anxiety.

When you hold your breath for a moment as the spinner spins rapidly on the game board and you wait to see if you’ve won the game or lost your turn.

Anxiety is a normal and natural emotion humans experience.  We all experience it multiple times in our lives.  Some things will trigger most people’s anxiety, others are very specific to the individual.  We need this unpleasant emotion for survival, it’s what pumps your adrenaline so you can outrun the chasing animal or lift a car to save the person trapped under it.  It serves as a deterrent from dangerous situations like crossing the street when the light is red.  And for most of us, once the stressful situation passes the adrenaline works itself out of our systems and we feel better.  If it was an especially big stressor, we may be “jumpy” for a couple of hours or even days after the situation passes but then we’re ok.

An anxiety disorder happens when this system that is meant to help us doesn’t work properly, causing havoc on a person’s life.  It presents itself in different ways but the end result is the same: what should have been only a slight spike in anxiety that passes in moments turns into debilitating events.

Nicholas has an anxiety disorder.

I Am Not A Father

Every year I get the same thing from various people and while I do understand and appreciate the sentiment, I find it a bit insulting.  As always, it's my personal opinion and to each their own.

A mother is a female and a father is a male.  To me, that is as far as the distinction goes.  To say a mother is special because she carried the child diminishes the role of females who have adopted children or who have willingly taken on the responsibility of a child not theirs.  To say a birth mother is more special than an adoptive mother or step mother is insulting at best.  And where does that leave the father?  Is a man less of a father because he does not share any genetic material with the child?

Lessons: The Sickies

I consider myself lucky for having such a healthy child.  He rarely gets sick and he is such a trooper when he does.  He tries to be his normal self but sometimes the illness brings him down and he gets whiny and cranky and clingy.  This week it was a cough with a slight cold.

He started maybe Friday with a cough.  I didn't think much of it, people cough without being sick.  Then Saturday he was cranky and had a fever.  He didn't grub on french fries.  That's when I knew he was sick.  He suffered this cough Sunday night and every night since then, not eating much and being very whiny.  I love my baby and don't like him feeling sick like that.  I was tempted for a moment to call the doctor but I know what he'll say: fluids, rest, tylenol for the fever, bring him back if he doesn't get any better in a week or to the ER if his fever gets really high.  Why bother?  So I decided to take matters into my own hands and play pharmacist.

I spent about 20 minutes standing in front of the children's medicine section at the Walmart comparing boxes.  I decided on the Triaminic for cough, grape flavoured (yuck!).  It says for kids 4 and older so 3 1/2 is close enough and I wasn't going to give him the full dose anyway since he doesn't take meds often.

I tried it right before bed, at 10pm, with surprising success.  It is much more liquidy than the tylenol and I knew the grape flavour wasn't going to be a hit.  I used a siringe and little by little with plenty of silliness from me he took 3/4 of a teaspoon (the box said 1 teaspoon for 4-6 years) with little mess.  Then I put him in bed.

Big mistake.

Within minutes we noticed he was happily playing in his bed, no coughing, and no intentions of sleep.  I kept telling him to settle down and he would, for a few minutes, before starting up again.  Then I heard velcro.  There is no velcro on his bed so it only meant one thing.  I stand up and look into the bed and notice lots of skin.  I stand on my bed and see a fully naked, laughing, Nicholas.  So I climbed up the bed and put the diaper back on, telling him that if he took it off again he had to wear underwear (I know, BAD!!), dressed him and tucked him in.  A few minutes later his feet were hanging off the side of the rail.  *sigh*  So I tell my SO, over Skype, "Good thing they don't add alcohol to cough syrup anymore!" and reached for the bottle that was still on my bed.

I'm taking very basic chemistry right now, the professor calls it toy department chemistry.  Right now we are learning about organic chemistry, at a very basic level, and I am actually understanding this tuff.  So I start reading the ingredients list and actually understanding what this crap is and what it looks like.  One of the 'inactive' ingredients is sorbitol.  The -ol ending tells me it's a type of alcohol.  Double *sigh*  He finally fell asleep around 12:30am.