Being startled by a restless child at 10.30pm at night after she has watched an episode of ‘Charmed’ or because her father has convinced her she has worms is, to be very honest, annoying and an interruption.
There is nothing I can do about a dream about being chased by the demonic Cole Turner or the fact she cannot sleep for squirming and fretting about orifice crawling wrigglers.
My short fuse is blaringly obvious when disturbed from slumber and my darling daughter often cops the full brunt. Through tired eyes I explain in my short motherly tone that she just has to close her eyes and go to back sleep. There will be no more ‘Charmed’ before bed time and we will deal with the potential worm invasion in the morning.
The welcome and happy greeting that welled inside me more recently when I was woken by a knock on the bedroom door at 1am was almost uncontrollable. I managed to contain myself long enough to pull my weary body out of bed in time to usher my girl in to the bathroom as she exclaimed “I am going to be sick!” Well, that woke me up!
As I touched her skin I knew there was something array, she was boiling yet said she was cold.
What happened next was I think one of a parent’s greatest fears when it comes to their children. It’s the middle of the night, she had a temperature in the high thirties and all the worst case scenarios start swimming around in my head. Was it a virus? Where did she get it? Why didn’t I notice sooner? Was it contagious? Will she be ok?
A trip to the emergency ward was inevitable and the ‘I am a bad parent’ syndrome immediately took flight.
Emergency room triage nurses have an amazing talent for always asking the most obvious questions that if I had been thinking straight I would have known or have done before freaking out and bring her to a hospital emergency ward?
Moving from the pink emergency chairs to the purple meant we had been processed but the waiting game that follows can make you paranoid. Nobody seems to talk to each other in waiting rooms, why is that? Are we all suffering from the same ‘I am a bad parent’ syndrome and don’t want to be found out in front of other parents, are we all too busy checking out the other people in the room in order to pacify or justify our own state of affairs or does common courtesy get the boot in the middle of the night?
Then there is the scenario when you come across a parent you know in the emergency waiting room, OMG! Plus their child has the same symptoms as mine. Is there a hot child epidemic or something?
The brain does not function well when sleep deprived and worried about a sick child in the middle of the night.
Three nurses, two doctors and countless hours later they are still not sure about her diagnosis. Each time we would relax on the hospital bed, spooning for comfort and warmth, another caring professional would return to check her vitals and pain level. Finally they admitted her for observation and I was given a lounge chair to rest in next to her bed while my partner was relegated to sleep in the car – the one parent only policy seemed mighty unfair at that stage.
I fell asleep before my daughter only to be woken an hour later when the sun came up and the gorgeous little girl in the cubicle next to us awoke and began chatting and moving around the room.
My poor little girl’s symptoms had not changed by shift change so we were discharged at 9am to face the peak hour traffic ride home.
Thankfully we had a bucket in the car from the night before because as we neared home the fluids started to flow.
It is amazing how a parent can block out putrid smells when it comes to comforting a sick child. It was certainly a memory jogger back to dirty cloth nappies and bleach smelling soaking buckets for me.
I bathed my girl like a senior on a chair in our double recess shower, a cathartic and nurturing experience for both of us and then slumber beckoned like an old friend.
Even though we slept most of the day I felt disoriented and fuzzy for the remainder of the daylight hours while my girl slept yet looked like a tired slug on her bed.
What a day! Can you recall middle of the night parent duties?
