a mom's life

DH and I had a lovely evening together watching the news and speaking harshly to the various assembled partisans, who of course couldn't hear a word of it. He went up to go to bed while I stayed down here puttering, as usual, but within minutes he was back downstairs with a still-sleeping DS2 in his arms.

The boy's face was covered with blood.

I vaguely remember DS1 having an overnight nosebleed at some point, but nothing like this. I cleaned up the boy while DH held him. In an apparent miracle, no blood got on his pjs. In another apparent miracle, no blood soaked through the pillow case or down to the mattress cover, because almost all of it (a rather large pool, it looks like) was on the top sheet. DS2 sleeps all over the place, seldom with his head actually on the pillows. This works out well when things like nosebleeds, or puking, happen.

I spent about 10 minutes scrubbing the blood out of all the bedding, and now it's in the wash. I'm sure it will come out fine. I'm not sure at all what is going on with DS2, though. Web searching on pediatric nosebleeds points to the probable cause: dry nasal membranes. It just seems odd, is all.

It's very strange, as a mom, to see your child covered in blood, especially when you know it's his. The lizard brain -- instinct -- panics, but the human brain clamps down immediately and says, "What's wrong, what happened?" and goes into problem-solving mode. It's very easy to tick off what's right: he slept through the whole thing, so obviously he wasn't in any great pain. And the bleeding has stopped on its own. Those are the most important things, and they are good things. Most likely DS2 will wake up in the morning and not even know anything happened. He probably won't even notice that he has different sheets on his bed.

After the boy is cleaned up, the bed stripped and remade, the bloody sheets scrubbed and thrown in the washing machine -- then the lizard brain gets a few moments' control, and the panic is thrown into brief relief before scuttling immediately back to worry, and fear. Is there something terribly wrong here? Most likely: No, but I'll have to keep an eye on the little guy for the next few days and make sure he's OK. Fear is exhausting. I try to push it away, too, and only partially succeed.

Early today I hustled the boy to the doctor because his lungs were squeaky last night. Ears, throat, and lungs all checked out OK, as I knew they would, but sometimes this little one gets persistent infections and I didn't want that to be the case here -- he has this brutal cough, but only from time to time. My lizard brain is telling me that it was too soon to bring him to the doctor, that it's next week when he'll be needing the anti-biotics...

I hope the lizard brain is wrong this time, but I fear it is not. It's not wrong often, and we've done the 2-trips-in-2-weeks doctor visits before. There are times when you just know that your kid is not right, but you have to accept that it's too soon for the doctor. It is difficult waiting until they are miserable enough to get treated, but it's also not easy to see $25 and an hour and half go down the drain for basically the information that your kid is not quite sick enough to merit anything other than OTC treatment.

My prayers tonight will be for no more nosebleeds, and improved conditions for everyone. I have my dermatology appointment tomorrow and if DS2 has to stay home from school I will be in a difficult position, since I already rescheduled this appointment from last week when DS1 was sick!

I'll just have to see what tomorrow brings. I hope I won't have to wash anymore sheets.