I mean, he's had colds, of course. In fact, between Christmas and February he was one big, snuffly, enduring cold but this is different. This is baby medication and everything. Naturally, I feel like I've failed him by allowing him to catch something in the first place. How did this happen?! We've moved house recently and it was, as it is for most, surely? a bit of a shit storm of de-cluttering prior to the "big day." Boxes and bin bags of stuff (mostly crap, but some of my favourite "stuff", it was just time to get rid of) shuffled its awkwardly-packed-self, towards the charity shops, piece by piece (is there any other way when you've got a baby? Show me the parent who can hold their 20+pound baby in one arm, and drag the chubby, spewing bin liners; you know the type, cheap as chips, flimsy as a pre-battered cod! into the shop.) Show me that human enigma and I'll show you an inconsolable, losing-at-life, green-eyed gaze. Because let's be honest, emotions are at an all time, sleep-deprived high right now... and for the foreseeable future. But back to the house move... So the general tumult of stuff: kept stuff, upturned my years of non-cleaning into a giant, dust exploration (if Instagram wanted to fill its boots with a neatly, chequered display of 'dead skin through the ages', then it would have a filtered field day from the timeless specimens unearthed in our house move).
Needless to say, this left all house members with a tickly throat, and itchy eyes and noses. But my baby boy has added his tonsils into the equation. Quite rightly, he can't bare to: lay down, swallow, eat, have a nappy change, smile (heaven forbid!) or refrain from choking on my leaky, let-down.
So basically, fuck my life! (An epic modern expression!) Here's this little being, who needs me more than ever (it's anyone's guess to understanding how I've kept him alive and relatively unscathed during the last 7 months even). He needs cuddles, holding, comforting and eye contact, conversation and smiling-encouragement to get better, to feel well. And what have I got? A whole bunch of silence. One of those moods has seemingly wafted in, from the North Norfolk coast, enshrouding my, enthusiastic mum-skills in a muffled, fog. I hate myself for it but still, nothing comes out. He verbally groans in boredom and yet I just stare at him. I look him directly in the eyes and I feel nothing. Nothing other than a need to sleep and star fish in my own bed. A need to sit and stare in to the vastness of the sea or even into the contained, vastness of a cup of tea. A need to hand the reigns over for a few minutes, to watch crap tv and not have my ears out on stalks, ready to jump to his aid immediately during rougher nights. So then comes the medication debate. How much discomfort can he stand without any? Should I be a "good enough mum", to rid his ailments purely by feeding him organic, vegan, soya rich tendril clippings, from the lesser spotted soy cactus? Or should I be hurling myself at the more natural, alternative medicine market? Do I need to trek to Nepal, gain an audience with a yogi and excel at assanas? Or perhaps scale the Himalayas, to gather some yak butter tea, to soothe his raw throat?
So off to the western, pharmacy I went. One of those ones with a minty, green, cross, barely twinkling in the dusty, aged, window display. I slapped down my sad little, bumpy, rectangle of plastic in exchange for 2, brass-brown, glass-bottled tinctures: the elixirs of wellness in infant land. All hail, baby-profen and baby-cetamol! He screamed as I aimed the purple, crayon-looking tube into his mouth, he pulled out the angry eyes and he spat it all over his sleeping bag (and my top).
Approximately 20% was ingested. He's now soundly sleeping in his newly pinker, stickier, baby sac and I'm crawling into my mattress bed on the floor (see recent house move), attracting sheets to my mum carcass, like a rubbed balloon to hair, as I attempt to permeate the nest. It will be a more restful kind of a sleep tonight, if, a much stickier one.