Miss FireButt 2009

Two weeks ago I posted about Laine having sleeping issues; or I was having issues with the fact that she wasn’t sleeping. That isn’t my problem anymore. Now we have explosive diarrhea. Her butt is a mucous bomb that spontaneously goes off no less than six times a day. It’s a real handy thing that my mom was watching Laine yesterday, I got updates every hour so that I knew what was going on. I got concerned about the regularity and nastiness of her diapers so I called the nurse yesterday and told her all of Laine’s issues. She is having unpredictable detonation of the bum, she has a decrease in appetite and her nose is runny but she has no fever and she is in good spirits. You know what she said? Swine Flu.
Well, really what she actually told me is that Laine most likely has a virus like the flu but with the threat of swine flu out there we had better be safe and that I needed to get her either to the doctors office or the hospital right away… Good morning children. Today’s letter is the letter ‘B’, the shape is trapezoid, the color is red and the word is STROKE.
The she says, “Oh wait, never mind, it says here in her chart that she’s teething, well okay then, she’s not sick she’s just teething. Loss of appetite and loose stool, fever and runny nose are all things that happen during the teething process. So Laine just has a diaper rash and she’s teething.”
My first reaction to all of this is to punch someone in the face, and my second reaction is to repeat everything back to her, so that I truly understand that Laine does not in fact have Swine flu, but she’s just teething. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!?!
After my initial moment of calling hellfire down on this woman I was able to collect myself and ask her what I’m supposed to do about the diarrhea and diaper rash. It was seriously intense to mentally go from sitting by Laine's hospital bed as she wastes away from swine flu to giving her some Pedialite and putting some Aquaphor on her butt. Sheesh what a day!
After this phone call I decided that I was going to be completely useless at work so I drove home. I needed to hug my kid. And when I got to my mom’s house she was playing with Jacob, Josh and Anna and having a grand time not dieing from any kind of pig cold and I was so happy that I really couldn’t stand it. As I was putting her down to sleep last night I held her tighter than I ever have and I cried as she laughed at me and I thank God that it’s only the little things that happen. Can you imagine me in a real crisis? Oh man, the world would end. And had she been at daycare yesterday I never would have been kept informed throughout the day on her butt status and I would have FLIPPED out when I got home and called the doctor then and had to wait for a nurse to call me back and who knows the state I’d be in if that’s the way it had played out, oh wait, yes we do… the world would end.
Last night she slept peacefully but she woke up three times with dirty skid-mark diapers. Each time she had a screaming fit when I tried to change her but within a few minutes of the bottle in her mouth afterwards she was back to smiles and then to sleep. This morning she had three dirty diapers before I took her to day care. That’s three times the snotty mucous-y stringy green nastiness that gets on your fingers no matter how hard you try to be careful.
The thing with Laine though is that you can’t break her good spirit, she is always in a good mood. Every now and then she’ll belt out this amazing scream/cry and then pass the loudest liquid-y fart ever and then she’ll smile again, like its nothing for her to poop acid fire and keep on playing. Her diaper rash that she got because of all this is nasty too. It’s ten times better than it was two days ago but still, her little bottom is all red and sore and I cry every time I have to touch it with the damned wipes. This morning’s last diaper didn’t seem to bother her that bad, and neither did the wipes in fact. So my fingers are crossed that all this weird gross stuff is behind us. Until next time and the next crisis, good night.