So this whole parenthood thing... Yeah, less sleep than before. No more carousing around town until the wee hours (who are we kidding - we really didn't do that even before Connor). Maybe less spontaneous sushi dinners. But overall, not too bad. The pros so far outweigh the cons, and Connor is pretty cute. Up to this point, it hasn't really been difficult. But that changed this weekend, as we had our first case of the true challenges of parenthood.
It started Friday night just after Connor went to bed. Now, I am going to try to describe this in as delicate way as we can....we both came down with simultaneous gastrointestinal Armageddon. Either food poisoning or the stomach flu - anyway you put it we had a rough night. Neither of us got any sleep, and we spent most of the night worshiping the porcelain throne or writhing in agony through fevered dreams of apocalpse. A visual to help you:
We developed some interesting maneuvers to deal with Connor, such as the famous take-the-baby-I-am-going-to-vomit-handoff. Luckily he only was up 2 times, and Ali deftly handled both situations with aplomb.
For some reason we kept saying to ourselves, we just have to make it to morning. Well morning came with its own set of problems, mainly a super active baby who had a normal night of sleep and was ready to play. I managed to drag myself to the store for bananas, Gatorade, and pedialyte for parental nutrition and rehydration while Mom got him ready for the day. Then we spent the rest of the day in 2 hour shifts of sleeping alternating with trying to keep Connor from suffering head trauma as we laid inert on the floor beside him.
Eventually, Ali felt better Saturday night, and a good night of sleep sorted me out. So we all felt pretty good Sunday - lucky that we all survived our first real challenge of parenthood. In our feverish logic, we didn't feel right asking for help in case we were contagious - I would not wish that on my worst enemy! As they say, the buck stopped here - but who was going to take care of us? As Ali kept saying, we really wished we lived closer to our immediate families (To paraphrase: " I want my Mommy!").
So it's Sunday night, we've both been on solids for about 24 hours and feeling pretty good. Boy is asleep and bares few if any scars from our ordeal. Score for us. Next step: find a babysitter we trust and can call upon when days are similarly dark and the end is near!
It started Friday night just after Connor went to bed. Now, I am going to try to describe this in as delicate way as we can....we both came down with simultaneous gastrointestinal Armageddon. Either food poisoning or the stomach flu - anyway you put it we had a rough night. Neither of us got any sleep, and we spent most of the night worshiping the porcelain throne or writhing in agony through fevered dreams of apocalpse. A visual to help you:
We developed some interesting maneuvers to deal with Connor, such as the famous take-the-baby-I-am-going-to-vomit-handoff. Luckily he only was up 2 times, and Ali deftly handled both situations with aplomb.
For some reason we kept saying to ourselves, we just have to make it to morning. Well morning came with its own set of problems, mainly a super active baby who had a normal night of sleep and was ready to play. I managed to drag myself to the store for bananas, Gatorade, and pedialyte for parental nutrition and rehydration while Mom got him ready for the day. Then we spent the rest of the day in 2 hour shifts of sleeping alternating with trying to keep Connor from suffering head trauma as we laid inert on the floor beside him.
Eventually, Ali felt better Saturday night, and a good night of sleep sorted me out. So we all felt pretty good Sunday - lucky that we all survived our first real challenge of parenthood. In our feverish logic, we didn't feel right asking for help in case we were contagious - I would not wish that on my worst enemy! As they say, the buck stopped here - but who was going to take care of us? As Ali kept saying, we really wished we lived closer to our immediate families (To paraphrase: " I want my Mommy!").
So it's Sunday night, we've both been on solids for about 24 hours and feeling pretty good. Boy is asleep and bares few if any scars from our ordeal. Score for us. Next step: find a babysitter we trust and can call upon when days are similarly dark and the end is near!
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