Vomit

Disclaimer: I won’t get graphic, I promise. Your weak stomach can probably handle this one.

Thankfully, I’ve lived a life with little experience in the vom department. Except, of course, for one particular night in college which I spent holding a certain friend’s hair back while she went at it in the dorm room trash can. Not to name any names, but girlfriend, that was intense.

I became close friends with The Porcelain God starting early in my pregnancy. I would spend a lot of mornings sitting on the edge of the tub trying to think of anything gross or repulsive in hopes that I could get on with it and leave for work relatively on time. The last thing the world needed was a pregnant woman with raging hormones weaving in and out of traffic on 476 with her emergency flashers on (not that I ever actually did that…)

My sister, who was also pregnant at the time, had it a lot worse than I did. She found herself pulling over on I-95 and in parking lots just to preserve her vehicle’s upholstery and new car smell. It’s a really awful feeling to be so much of a slave to your stomach sphincters.

After the first five or so months, trips to the bathroom became less frequent. And then a few months later, the baby came.

Does anyone else notice a running theme in these blog entries? THE BABY CHANGES EVERYTHING!! Just putting that out there.

I was blessed with a beautiful baby girl with a pretty horrific reflux issue. I swear she spits up over half of what she eats. The older she gets, the less frequent the regurgitations occur, but it seems like there is a lot more now. My husband has gone into full wardrobe preservation mode. If he is dressed for work, there’s no WAY that child is going within three feet of his body. So I make sure he's the one to get up when she cries at 4 am. Of course I only do it to make sure she gets her Daddy time. It has nothing to do with the extra few hours of sleep for me, honest.

Which brings us to the main event. This afternoon, the spit up went to a whole new level. Now that Jane is quasi- mobile, she really likes to wiggle when I hold her. Her favorite thing in the WORLD is standing up on my legs. And by standing I mean keeping her knees locked while I support ninety percent of her weight.

Out of this emerged a game my husband likes to call “helicopter”. (Can you guess where this is going?) Helicopter just means that I raise her up, fairly slowly, until she is above my head, and then bring her down again while making a really annoying helicopter noise. She thinks it’s hilarious, and I really want to get her to laugh, so I do this basically all day. WELL. Today, while in midair, she vomited. I mean, VOMITED. All I have to say is, thank God my mouth was closed. Yeah. That bad.

I haven’t even told my husband because I’m sure he would never hold her again. I just put her in her crib to play while I jumped in the shower. It’ll be a while before I bring her up over my head again.

So yeah, I know a lot about vomit. But I figure this is only the tip of the iceberg. I can’t WAIT until she gets a stomach virus. My husband suggested just putting down newspaper and letting her roll around on it until she’s over whatever she’s got. And since now I know what it’s like to have your child’s vom in your hair, that idea doesn’t sound half bad.