The Sacrifices I Make For My Children. At Least At Nap Time.

By Alex Iwashyna, blogger at Late Enough

My daughter didn’t sleep well for most of our spring break.

I also coughed for the entire week like a smoker started a poker tournament in my lungs.

And it all came to a head Friday afternoon:

I’m trying to put N to sleep at my mom’s house. After two beds and and five bribes, she finally falls asleep. On my chest of death.

And right as she drifts off, I begin to cough. Hackhackhack. I’m trying to suppress it because for every cough, her little head bounces up and down and up and down. And she needs SLEEP. And I need her to sleep so I can sleep.

My lung-living smoker poker players puff harder in response.

I close my eyes because I don’t want to know if this is waking my daughter up. If you don’t see it, it will not happen.

I also need to use my Jedi mind tricks to enter a meditative state of bliss where my throat and lung muscles are loose enough to let the air go in and out without any need to hurry it through with hacks and spasms and phlegm.

Instead, I cough so hard I throw up. In my mouth. Twice.

I have get myself out of the room NOW if I want my daughter to stay asleep. And not die.

I slither to the left while trying to maintain my daughter’s head at the exact angle of my chest and slowly lower it to the bed while I fall to the floor. I half-crawl out of the room, tears streaming out my eyes and nose from all the suppressed hacking and wheezing.

I wander downstairs in a daze, and my phone rings as I notice water dripping out of my ears.

I tell my husband, the pediatrician, my weird ear discovery. He diagnoses me immediately, and I send this public service announcement out to the Twitterverse:

But then my daughter took a two and a half hour nap.

Totally worth two eardrums!

Alex Iwashyna

Alex Iwashyna went from a B.A. in Philosophy to an M.D. to a SAHM, poet and writer by 30. She spends most of her writing time on LateEnough.com, a humor blog (except when it’s serious) about life, parenting, marriage, zombies, culture and religion with special appearances by aliens, alienation and rude Southern people who offend her Yankee sensibilities. She has a muse of a husband and two young kids who are Southern but not rude. Yet.

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