Puddi's illness and what we learned from it

Puddi fell badly ill with some gastro-enteric + something else viral infection last week and wound up having to be hospitalised for five days last week. The whole episode was traumatic, and though she seems to be bouncing back with the resilience only children have, we know she's still traumatised by the way she howls when put into her crib at night. I think she fears having the drip inserted again.

It started with a simple episode of her throwing up early morning. We thought it was because she had been too warmly covered - A and I do tend to err on the side of caution, because she and her brother have a habit of kicking off their bedcovering. That evening when I came back from work, I found she had a fever. I took the next day off and took her down to the paediatrician who said it looked like a simple viral which sometimes causes throwing-up episodes and prescribed an emetic and fever SOS medication. She was ok that day and managed to keep her food down after the emetic, though she had less than her usually healthy appetite.

The next morning she threw up again so A took her to see the paediatrician that morning. She was prescribed an additional antibiotic and seemed ok by lunch when he left for work. By afternoon, she had raging fever of 104 and had to be sponged down. Mom called me and I rushed home in a panic, because she had also been throwing up everything, including water.

I had had an uneasy feeling since the first time she had thrown up that this was a gastric bug. I don't know why because she's been through a fever/ viral once before that involved throwing up but this time, I had an instinctive fear. We figured the next morning would be too late so we called the paediatrician and she asked us to rush Puds to the hospital. Once there, she was promptly hooked up to the drip as she was mildly dehydrated, and then it was a series of gloomy up-and-down days when she would throw up, dislodge the most hideously watery and green potty and lie moaning piteously all day.

It was really sad to watch this perpetual motion machine tied down to the bed and not just not protesting but lying there not moving. From someone who chatters all day, always has a naughty twinkle in her eye, moving her cute little fanny from side to side when music plays and being the family dog, i.e. begging everyone to give her a taste of whatever they are eating or drinking, she turned into a 'goongi gudiya' - a mute doll who just lay apathetically, said no to any form of oral nutrition including water which we otherwise have to keep far out of her reach, shook her head negatively when music played and stopped speaking, apart from heart-rending little moans. She lost a good 25% of her body weight in 2 days and now weighs as much as she did when she was a year old.

Thankfully she's back at home, being her usual nutty self - the family dog in action, wiggling her butt to the tinny sound of every television advertisement she hears, playing tricks and stealing water. Most of her clothes are somewhat loose for her now, but I guess that's a matter of time, especially if she has my genes and genius for gaining weight.

What did we learn from this?

....To always err on the side of panic when it comes to the kids' health and well-being. No matter how good a doctor is, they don't know your child as you do and won't be able to read the signs of an inarticulate sick child as you can. Never try and brave it out or fear being a nuisance to the doctor - you should be one when it comes to the kids...

...To listen to your instinct when it tells you something. I keep telling myself this when I quiz but it's a good life lesson as well. I should have had her stool and urine checked up immediately after she threw up the first time, when something told me this was serious...

...That family is the most important thing in life ( in case we had forgotten that). It comes before everything else - friends, money, career, status ( if you care about it)...absolutely before everything else...

...That you should have a paediatrician closer home. Ours lives half an hour away but I want someone within 10 minutes...

...That eternity is the definition of the time it takes you to get your sick child to the hospital. I almost couldn't breathe during the drive to the hospital.

...That protective instinct is the term attributed to my willingness that evening to singlehandedly blow up all other cars off the road so I could race her to hospital sooner...

...That Chubbocks is an amazingly sensitive boy and no matter how grown-up he seems sometimes, he needs to be treated with extra love and care...

Mother Love

It's interesting to think that of all the relationships that exist in the human world, the only one that is parallelled in the animal kingdom is the mother-child one. There are the rare exceptions like swans or lobsters mating for life, but the one that cuts across is the maternal bond. I guess it's designed that way to ensure basic survival of the different species, but whatever the reason, it's heartwarming.

We got evidence of it several years ago through a pet. A cat, one monsoon, decided to have her kittens on the windowsill of our drawing room. The window sill was a good 2 feet deep and provided ample protection from the raging storm, and we woke up to find 2 little kittens curled up there. We put a cardboard box and some old clothes out for the ginger cat and she made a cozy nest for her two kiddies out there. Sadly one of the kittens died soon thereafter and the mother cat left our place a couple of months later. The other kitten adopted us but only in part - he had the soul of a wild cat. He never ate anything we put out, preferring to hunt his own food, never allowed any petting or caressing by us and made it clear that the relationship could only be on his terms, not ours. He came whenever he wanted to, lay in a patch of sunlight in our sun room or lolled about elsewhere at will. We named him Sphinx, after his habit of curling up in that pose on top of the sofa.

After a while we started to notice that Sphinx seemed to have a date saturday morning and were curious to observe. Come 10 am saturday morning, he would be eager, all aquiver with excitement. He would wait in our garden, all his nerves on alert. About five minutes later, who should come along but his mother! He and his mother romped through the garden playing catch-me-if-you-can, roll me over and other such games, leaping up to snap at the flowers, throwing themselves onto each other in that visceral connection that now reminds me of the way my kids throw themselves on me. It was a joy to watch the two, completely oblivious to us gawkers and to anything else, their orange bodies gleaming in the morning sun. At the end of the romp, they would cuddle up quietly for a snooze, mother cat and kiddie cat all tangled up in a bundle of orange fur, so entwined you couldn't tell one from the other.

They kept us this rendezvous every Saturday, and as long as we lived in that house, we made it a point to watch them. Sphinx declined to come along when we moved house so we left him to his happy hunting grounds. But I hope and believe that he and his mom kept up their playdate as long as they lived.

My baby and me

When I first found out I was having a baby I didn’t feel very much besides nausea. I had never been overly maternal or felt any ticking from the old body clock. Over the months of gestation, the nausea receded but though various worries kept manifesting themselves, I didn’t feel any special bond with the baby. I worried about that too.

After my son was born, since I was woozy and passed out from the sedation, everyone else in the immediate family saw him before I did. And even when I saw him I didn’t feel what I expected – a gush of love so strong and powerful that nothing else would compare. My husband seemed to have bonded much faster than I did.

Through the first couple of months of endless feeding and cleaning I guess my son and I took our first tentative steps (obviously metaphoric in his case) towards understanding each other and maybe liking.My son is six months old now. And today as I watch him, I am touched by myriad emotions.

At times his air of fragility and vulnerability annoy me, make me angry. Nobody should be so weak, so defenceless. How will I protect him, not just from the rest of the world but even from me and my moods?I watch him reach for a toy and fail to grab it – it is beyond his reach. He struggles, screwing up his forehead in concentration, wriggling his little body this way and that. His tiny rump sticks up in the air – he has just taught himself to start crawling backwards. Sometimes his forehead bangs down on the mat in weariness or frustration. Finally he figures out a short cut – he pulls at the mat till it folds up, bringing the toy within his grasp. I am amazed at his ingenuity.

As I massage his body, I feel the softness of his skin - softer than cream or butter or down, smoother than silk or satin. I can’t help myself - I kiss his tiny dimples at the elbow, the almost invisible one on his left cheek. I kiss the deep lines in his thighs and the little indentations in his feet. His curling eyelashes almost touching his eyebrows. His chubby fists. His rosebud mouth, down the pale nipples to plant a raspberry into his belly. His rounded rump. His wispy hair, flying in the breeze. I try and imprint a visceral memory of his body as it is right now since none of his photographs or videos seem to capture him the way my eyes see him. And my eyes will not be able to recall this moment of his life like my body can.

His smiles light up not just his face but my day. He laughs with his whole body and I can feel the knots in mine loosen up. I love the confidence he has that if he cries in a particular way or makes a certain noise, someone will not only hear but interpret the sounds and be there instantly to supply his needs and wants. I wish he could always have that certainty.

I marvel that his perfect body came from my imperfect one, that half of his intelligence and his genes came from me.He is like the long vertical stroke of the letter ‘I’, which joins up the two short parallel lines. Before he came along, my husband and I were the two parallel lines going in the same direction but still independent. Now he has taken a part of me, a part of my husband and his own particular magic. And joined the three of us into an interdependent unit. He has made us a family.
(Cross-posted from we are like this only)