Mama Tried

I’ve always thought it was really tough to be sick as a lawyer. It’s not like in high school when I spent a week as a fry cook at McDonald’s and I could just find someone to take my shift (which I did at least once during that week). I mean, lawyers are important – we have deadlines and hearings and briefs (oh my).

As fate would have it, sickness always seems to strike at the worst possible time. It’s always a week with multiple hearings on the same day and briefs due and clients ringing my phone off the hook. It’s never those weeks where I’m taking two hours lunches and getting pedicures at 4 (not that there are ever weeks like that; really, Managing Partner, if you’re reading this – that never happens and if you do see me at the nail salon in the middle of the day I’m either marketing or contemplating legal arguments for an upcoming brief).

Not only do I only get sick that one week a year when I really cannot be sick, but it also happens to be the one week of the year that all of my colleagues are exceedingly “busy” (please note my intentional use of quotation marks) and not those weeks where the same colleagues are encouraging me to join them for two hours lunches and pedicures (see caveat above regarding non-existence of such days).
So, I thought being sick as a lawyer was tough. Boy was I wrong. Being sick as a lawyer is nothing – it’s being sick as a MOM that is tough. As a lawyer, I can send bossy emails to my assistant and peruse briefs from the comfort of my bed. As a mom, there’s nobody to dictate caring for my child too and I certainly can’t properly monitor my newly-walking 1 year old from bed.

Now don’t get me wrong. Hubby tried, Hubby tried. In fact, he spent the first two nights sleepless with a screaming monster-baby who knew that something was rotten in the state of Denmark. Somehow she knew that there was some reason mama wasn’t coming to her and she was going to scream until she figured it out. She didn’t care that mama tried to explain her sickness – she wanted mama and wanted her now!

It didn’t help that the day I fell ill also coincided with the day Pumpkin got her one-year boosters. Once again, as fate would have it, we were one of the lucky 1 in 10 babies who, according to the papers sent home from the doctor, would have “irritability” for 1-2 days after getting shots. We tried everything to ease the irritability without me actually having to hold (and thereby infect) her. We started with baby ibuprofen, went to daddy rocking and pacing and cuddling, to the illusive “cry it out” method our doctor always refers to. I’ll say here and now – crying it out is a crock. That is, unless by “out” they mean “out of the crib” because our experience is that “crying it out” starts with a whimper that turns into a cry, which escalates to a scream that then becomes a gagging, vomiting shriek and ultimately – out of the crib we take her.

As I’m slowly but surely recovering from this yuck, I must admit the past few days haven’t been all fever and crying. Over the weekend our little Pumpkin turned one and her first birthday was PERFECT. Honestly, I couldn’t have scripted it better (and those of you who know my A-type personality know I did script it). On party day Pumpkin woke up happy and then took an unheard of two-hour nap while mama ran around town getting balloons and picking up cake. I guess I should insert the phrase “frantically ran around”, although I didn’t realize my frenzy until one of the 18 year olds blowing up balloons for me at Party City gave me a knowing pat on the hand and told me I was a great mama and doing a great job.

At the party, Pumpkin was all smiles and charm. She flirted in her gorgeous pink tutu and then turned on the comedy for us with the always funny “plate on the head” joke and Cheetos hanging from her mouth. Then there was the cake. Now Aaron and I had bets on whether she would even know what to do with the cake and Aaron was certain she would just topple it off the highchair onto the ground. Boy, were we wrong. It was as if she had attended hundreds of birthday parties before as she dove into the icing and smeared it from head to toe, with plenty in her mouth, too. The marvel of her birthday was only compounded by the fact that she started walking ON HER BIRTHDAY.

All in all it was a dream birthday and I’m glad to pay for it with a week of sickness because it was worth it. I will say all of our family spent way too much on gifts because ever since Saturday the only “toy” she’s really been interested in is a plastic fork and bowl from her kitchen set from which she pretends to eat (surprisingly much more steadily than she actually eats with a fork and bowl). Had I known the wonder that is a plastic fork and bowl, I could have given her one of those from my own real kitchen long before her birthday.

In any event, infection aside (at least it’s mine this time) all is well in the State of Pumpkin and we are full speed ahead into the exciting second year. Now, I’ve just got to figure out a way never to get sick again…certainly that isn’t an unrealistic expectation.