So, I don’t really get sick a lot. Sometimes, I go so long in between illnesses that I forget what it feels like to be sick and then when people around me have colds, I find myself cussing them in my head and calling them pansies. (Men, especially. But they tend to be exceptionally whiney when it comes to colds.)

Then, my baby got a cold. And then I convinced that she had everything from swine flu to whooping cough.  And then she got better. And eventually, even though she was still a little stuffy, she was back to her normal, cheerful self. She went back to sleeping all night and cooing at me all morning while we played with her toys.

And then I got a cold.

It started with a sore throat, which escalated to the point that it felt as though I had attempted to eat a few sheets of sandpaper and a headache that felt sort of like the top of my head was going to just pop right off. And a little clown was going to pop out. (I just pictured my head as a Jack-in-the-Box, in case you didn’t catch that…) And I was okay with having a cold, because 1. I had wine and 2. I am not a pansy.

Eventually, though, I realized that wine does not cure a cold. And, though I still was not a pansy, I realized that, “hey. I feel kind of shitty. That’s no good.” and then I went to sleep. And MB’s mom watched Baby L for a few hours in the morning so I could bury myself in my down comforter and pretend that I was living back in those days when I still had time to bury myself in my comforter for several hours and sleep. When I woke up, I felt better. But still not quite human. There was no more sandpaper. And the little clown had kept himself contained.  I finished out yesterday feeling tired, but generally, you know, not like  a pansy.  And then about 1 o’clock this morning, Baby L woke up and sounded like she had taken all the snot from everyone else in the whole house and jammed it into her tiny face. And so I changed her, fed her, slathered her with baby chest rub and turned on that humidifier thing (that everyone tells me to use, but that seems to make absolutely no difference in the amount of snot that my baby keeps in her face). All seemed to be well (except for the fact that now, I couldn’t sleep because I could only breathe out of my left nostril and only if I was laying on the left side of my body, which I can’t do because that’s just not how I roll.  Oh yeah, and because I was obsessing over the possibility that Baby L would suffocate on all the snot.

Because Baby L sleeps through the night, I rarely panic anymore about something tragic happening while I rest, (this is not to say that I don’t sometimes check 47 times at night to make sure she’s breathing…but now it is only sometimes and not, you know, every night…) but let me tell you…after I got done with that bulb thing, I couldn’t imagine there being anything left in there…but there was, internet, there really, really was…So…I broke down at  4:30 when she woke up, practically snorting, and gave her Benadryl (before you get all crazy-pants on me, internet, this is what the doctor TOLD me to do…) and it helped. And she did super good until around 10:30 when she had her second bottle. And then the snorty screaming started. There were saline drops, there was nose-suckage, there were tears. (Many of which were mine.) And about an hour ago, there was another dose of Benadryl.

And now, either my baby is just high, or she is feeling better. Maybe a little bit of both. But how much snot does one person have to endure!?