Quarantine, please

The funny thing about having a baby is that all of a sudden you have to be an adult.

As a child, when you get sick you're waited on hand and foot. You stake out one of the couches for days on end and just kind of peacefully languish until you feel better. Looking back, there's nothing better.

As a childless adult, you take it easy for a few days. Everyone understands.

As the proud owner of a new baby, the only change is that life just gets harder. You get even less sleep, if that's humanly possible. You have to use one hand to hold the baby, another one to fix dinner and now a third to blow your nose.

So ever since Kalina was born, one of the things I dreaded most was when both she and I would inevitably be sick. I pictured sleepless nights rocking a screaming baby who couldn't breathe through her nose, subjecting her to every treatment the Internet could suggest, and bundling her up for a trip to the emergency room, only to decide that wasn't necessary, only to bundle her up again 30 minutes later. Only to want to go to the ER myself so maybe they'd let me sit in the waiting room and just sit. Languish peacefully. Maybe fill out a form or two.

Therefore, when Matt came down with a cold after Thanksgiving, I inherited it a week later, and the baby cried hoarsely a couple days after that, I almost checked into a hotel.

First, a word about hoarse crying: for one, it's a fact. Even babies who are still only speaking in vowels can sound hoarse. Of course, I tried for a full 12 hours to convince myself that 1.) I was imagining things, and once I couldn't deny it anymore that 2.) She was only hoarse because she had cried it out a bit the night before--kind of like how adults can get hoarse from cheering on a football team.

Unfortunately, I learned I can't just make something up and decide it's true--the baby was, in fact, sick with a cold. I was initially very impressed at her stamina in holding out a good week and a half after the germs were initially introduced.

This was soon followed by the realization that my worries about sleepless nights would only have been legitimate had I been getting decent sleep to begin with, which I'm still not (I'll spare you the details, but we're back to slogging through our nights again). It was a sad, sad, sad irony.

And then the most amazing thing happened: Kalina mellowed. Not only did she not sleep any worse than she had been sleeping, but she became easier during the day. When I put her someplace, she quietly played, or watched whatever I was doing. She might stay that way for as many as 10 minutes at a time. I busied myself around the house doing laundry and wrapping Christmas presents, thoroughly enjoying my emancipation.

What a pleasant surprise, I thought. Am I a terrible parent for enjoying my baby's misery? I should add a caveat here that Kalina didn't actually seem to be miserable: she was her usual self, just a bit more patient. Maybe her cold reminded her that she depends on me for survival and so maybe should occasionally give Mommy an easy day (still waiting for an easy night).

Once I got over my initial shock and delight, I realized that my baby does a much better job of weathering a cold than I do.

Then a brief second went by in which I considered the possibility of purposely infecting my child next time I had a large freelance project, or just a lot to get done around the house. Would that be so bad???

It may still get worse. But in the meantime, life continues pretty much as usual, except for the fact that we've added a few things to our repertoire of "maybe she's cold, maybe she's wet, maybe she's bored, maybe she's hungry, maybe she's tired, maybe she's overtired, maybe she's not tired, maybe she's gassy, maybe she's warm" to explain why she's fussy or won't sleep. We now have "maybe she's congested, maybe her throat hurts" to flip through as well. It's still anybody's guess most of the time.