"I'm not sick; I'm Zeben"

Last night as I slept, I began to feel like maybe I was sleeping with a hot water bottle instead of my usual sleeping companion, my wife my two-year-old. And sure enough, when I woke up in the morning, I realized that Zeben was, indeed, feeling quite a bit warmer than normal. I took his temperature to confirm and found him to be running at 102.4°.

"Why are you sticking that under my arm?"
"Because I want to take your temperature and see how high your fever is."
"Why?"
"Because you're sick."
"I'm not sick. I'm Zeben."

This is one of the most common corrections Zeben makes in his role as "the Word Police."

"No, I'm not 'two-and-a-half,' I'm Zeben."
"I am not a 'boy.' I am Zeben."
"And I'm not 'hungry' either. I'm Zeben."

Honestly, his attachment to his name as his sole descriptor pleases me quite a bit. Especially given how strongly I felt that his name should be "Zeben," before he was even conceived. And even though I doubted it at times--"are we really going to name our baby Zeben? What kind of a name is that?"--it was the only name that felt right.

Zeben at 102 degrees

But sadly, today Zeben is Zeben and he's sick. He remained relatively steamy all day long, and alternated between acting deliriously giddy, and like a melting stick of butter, heavy on the butter and the melting. I probably spent a good six hours just sitting on the couch, letting him suck on my boob--literally nursing him back to health, or trying to anyway--while contemplating what it means to have four kids and a virus living in our house.

The first time Luke and Jaz got really sick--sometime in the second half of their first year--I remember feeling like my whole vision of parenting had been a lie. I had left this critical detail out of my fantasy all together, and felt entirely unprepared for the reality of having sick babies to take care of. Hardly anything that I had figured out about caring for my healthy children applied to life with feverish, mucus-dripping children. My bag of mothering tricks was reduced to only one: my magical breasts were all that seemed to work. And even then, I had to take into consideration the difficulty that congested babies can have with staying latched on to nurse well, and the way my nipples felt after being sucked on hour after hour after painful hour. I started to think that they might really just fall off. And also like if they didn't fall off, then like I might prefer to have them surgically removed than to allow my sick babies to continue to suck on them day after night after day after night. Not that I'm trying to discount this top benefit of breastfeeding in any way--I'm seriously not sure how sickness works with babies and toddlers who don't have breasts to suck on and breastmilk to fill their tummies with; it's always been the only thing my sick nurslings would accept, and it's kept them from getting dehydrated many times--but it's not an all together easy solution.

a much-needed boob break!
Zeben drinking water/lemonade/herbal tincture
and watching a movie

Nothing is easy when I have sick kids. Or, when I have one sick kid, and three not-yet-sick kids, and one of the seemingly-healthy kids is a newborn baby (who I'm trying to protect from the sick kid's germs), and the other two seemingly-healthy kids are performing in their one-and-only final performance after two weeks of drama camp. I couldn't hold the baby. I couldn't miss the play. I couldn't unlatch the toddler from whatever remained of my sucked-dry breast. I felt a bit stuck. And then it dawned on me . . . now that we've created these four kids, we've also created the potential to have four sick kids. And that's a reality too overwhelming to imagine. But I can't stop myself from imagining even further. What if I got sick too? And my wife? And all six of us were too sick to move . . . how would anybody take care of anybody? Suddenly having the one sick kid didn't seem like such a big deal anymore. I loaded him up in the car. I nursed him through the play and didn't let him breathe on anyone. Especially not the baby, who my wife was holding. And my six-year-olds were fabulous--as the "Teeny Tiny Man"--and even succeeded in making my one sick kid laugh.

I don't really make a fuss out of the kids being sick--it's inevitable, it's good for their immune systems--but it is mostly a bummer when it happens. I hate the worry, and I hate the isolation. Waiting for a virus to make the rounds through all of the members of our family can mean that we're out of the social rotation for weeks, lest we inflict our germs on our friends. But there are upsides to sickness too, like extra snuggling time with extra-mellow versions of our generally-rambunctious children, and getting to teach the kids about how to be good caretakers themselves (Lukas, especially, really shines when taking care of his sick brothers). And then there's the reminder that illness brings about how great it is to be well, and the way that everything just feels so simple once the virus has left the house for good.


I'm hoping that tomorrow I wake up next to a much chillier version of Zeben, and that this particular virus is quick and kind as it tries out the rest of us as potential hosts. One at a time, please.