Mr. Coughie

Thanks to the astronomical levels of pollen, Primo has developed a non-stop convulsive cough. As with all maladies, it is much, much worse at night. Thanks ever so much for that, Mother Nature, because God knows my kids and I don’t need sleep, wouldn’t even know what to do with uninterrupted sleep if we stumbled upon it.

Primo’s had this hacking, gagging, horrific cough all night long for two weeks, and since the doc discovered he was wheezing last week, every time I hear his cough I instantly wonder if he’s wheezing and having bronchial spasms or whatever the hell the doc said was happening which caused the wheeze and which I am too afraid to look up, online

So he coughs. I try to sleep through it but cannot because I am seized with worry. Then I climb up into the bunk bed and scratch his back basically all night long with small intervals of sleep in between.

Motherhood.

And to think when he was a baby, I thought the sleep deprivation would only last a few months. Ha! It’s a good thing we don’t know what we’re getting ourselves into.

Then last night Mr. Coughie actually slept through the night without a single hacking episode. Which would have given me a well-deserved, delicious break – had not SECONDA started coughing at precisely the same moment he stopped.

Isn’t it always the way? A few weeks ago, I actually said to Primo: “When precisely did you have the talk with Seconda where you two decided that as soon as one of you stopped being sick, the other one would start and as soon as one of you was happy, the other would become unhappy and as soon as one of you was asleep, the other one would wake up?”

“We never had that talk, Mommy,” he said.

Then I felt like a total jerk to have sullied my son’s pristine earnestness with the stain of sarcasm.

So now I’ve got Mrs. Coughie. Technically she’s a Ms. I guess although that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. And Mrs. Coughie is a much less grateful and manageable convalescent than her brother. She just coughs, cries, calls me and then once I show up, yells at me to go away. Repeat cough, cry, call and rejection.

“Do you want Mommy to scratch your back?”

“Nooooo.”

“Do you want Mommy to snuggle with you?”.

“Nooooo.”

“Do you want Mommy to give you some water?”

“Nooooo.”

“Do you want Mommy to go away?”

YES!

“Then WHY DO YOU KEEP CALLING MOMMY IN?”

It does beg the question.