Yay for Diarrhea!

On Wednesday, River didn't take a whole lot of milk when I woke her up. She nursed a bit on the right side, twiddled with my nipple on the left side, and was done. And she was totally not about her morning Cheerios. She felt a little warm, so I put it off to teething and went about the morning.

We got home from dropping Jeffrey off at school and went to the kitchen for her oatmeal.

"Are you hungry, baby?" I cooed at her.

She looked at me quizzically, blinked, and barfed all over me. Twice.

For a moment, I just stood there, shocked. With barf all over me. Then I hustled us into the bathroom and into the shower. There's something so...amniotic about taking a shower with a baby. They just curl into you and it's all warm and steamy. River also tends to bounce a bit during mommy/baby showers, but on Wednesday, she lay her head on my shoulder and was still.

It was then that I remembered the three to eleven day waiting period for some poisonous mushroom side effects on the sheet the emergency room gave us. (I realize that that sentence makes very little sense, but I can't figure out how to word it otherwise. I am a writer. For money.) I said a very bad word and hopped out of the shower and got us both dressed, feeling a bit queasy myself. I phoned the doctor, made an appointment (they were infuriatingly vague), and settled River in for a nap. A quick scan of the internet reassured me that the mushrooms with the long waiting period (the ones that kill you more slowly than the others) don't grow around here and even if they did they don't look like the ones my shmoopy may or may not have eaten, so I went to go wash some clothes. Except...

Except I didn't feel so well myself, duckies. In fact, I was, as we say in our family, "down in the belly." Several times. Several, several times.

I managed to get River to the doctor's office where the nurse practitioner regaled me with stories of her daughter munching on rat poison AND a roach and the doctor told me that River was one of three kids in twenty-one years who'd eaten a mushroom. My girl...throwing off the curve. I schooled him about all of the mushrooms in our area (I'm a mycologist now) and we discussed whether it could make you sick to inhale spores from puffballs (it can) and he told me not to give River any milk and not to eat any dairy products myself and we'd be fine.

Not so much, Mr. Doctor Man. Not. So. Much.

Well, River was fine. She didn't vomit again and other than a being a little feverish and wanting to snuggle more than is her wont, she was a-okay and by dinner, insisted on eating a whole banana, applesauce, and several crackers.

I know this only as hearsay, however, because at dinnertime, I was laid out on the couch, shivering and panting to try to make the nausea go away. I was sick, y'all. I had a fever, I was nauseated, I was down in the belly, my head was killing me, and I had chills. It was horrible.
The worst part is that I didn't call out for work and so I wound up watching some show about blowing up things until two in the morning. Also, the only thing I ate all day was a Valentine's Day-sized pack of Nerds to get the awful taste out of my mouth.

I felt better yesterday and River was completely back to normal. I looked up my symptoms online and it looks like I either had food-related virus or cholera. Personally, I'm betting on cholera because I FELT SO BAD.

But today all is well and I'm able to eat and drink again, although the headache and general gassy feeling (sexy, I know) remain. And I can honestly say that as much as it sucked to be sick, it also was a huge relief because I knew that River was okay because we were both sick.

It was one of those "Wow, I really am a mom" moments: I was happy that I had diarrhea. Woohoo! Gastrointestinal discomfort! Rock on!