I've always been a big fan of this phrase. I like to try to apply it to my life whenever possible, a reminder that karma is a powerful thing. I don't always live up to what I preach to myself, but when I don't, I'm not surprised if something comes back around to bite me in the ass.
Today however, I'm not writing about the phrase to preach life lessons to everyone that reads this. I'm applying the phrase to something else entirely. Something all of us with little tiny kids know all too well. Germs. Yucky, sticky, sour, slimy, stuck to the teeny, tiny fingers and noses of our little babies. Germs. I hate them. They enter our homes, get smeared from place to place, person to person, doing their damage, leaving an aftermath of babies with too much well energy to burn and sleep deprived parents with no way to catch up.
We had the stomach flu in this house this week. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to get (though I'm not really sure we're in the clear yet). But my mind was reeling on Monday at 4:30am when Lillian started vomiting in her bed. What if the boys get it? What if I get it while the boys or Lilli have it? What if John gets it with everyone and I have 4 people to chase with puke buckets? And then I get it when everyone is well and John can't take any more sick days to help me?
Thankfully, not much of this came to pass. Lilli puked for 36 hours, maintaining a pretty good fever for a good 24 hours of it. Pretty much the minute Lilli was well, both boys started in with fevers at almost 103 degrees for 24 hours if not more. They were crying and fussy and just wanted to be held. Which then put a very attention driven almost 3 year old into a tantrum tizzy because she's not getting the attention she's used to since her brother's have been mobile and not held as much. We waited and waited, but thankfully the boys never got the stomach part of it that Lilli did. I have no idea what the difference was because they clearly all had the same bug. I do think the babies have stronger immune systems now because they eat better than she does. I worry about her.
She has a habit, like a lot of kids, of sucking on her last two fingers on her left hand. Most kids find a thumb, this one found these fingers at about 3-4 months old and hasn't looked back. I have no idea how to get her to stop, but I worry this habit is allowing her to bring home junk on a weekly basis from Mother's Day Out. Or anywhere really.
But I can't place this all on Lillian. Neither John nor I got sick. So it is quite possible one of us brought home something we've previously been exposed to. Obviously there is nothing one can do to stop this stuff, it is going to happen, and in a lot of ways it is good they are exposed because their immune systems just get that much stronger over time. I swear my husband has the most amazing immune system. I've only seen him really sick one time in over 6 years. He will beat a cold in a day when the rest of us will have it for a week. I hope the kids grow to have his immune system. AND he was formula fed (there you go - props to all my formula feeding mommy friends!).
In the midst of all the chaos and sheet changing and laying in bed with a burning baby next to me, I could not help but think we really are pretty lucky to have the flu. After all, it is only the flu. There are families out there that deal with this kind of stuff all the time. Families with handicapped children or terminally ill children. Parents who go on 2-4 hours of sleep a night, every night. We had a rough week. The germs came in, got passed around, and went on out the door, likely to infect some other lucky family that we hope will only get the flu. Sometimes things we don't ask for come around to bite us in the ass, but life could be a lot harder. I'll take it this way any day.
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