17 Weeks and 5 Days

Mark learned a lot of new skills last week, includ­ing how to sneeze, cough, spit and breathe through a stuffed nose. Yep, major baby mile­stones. I just wish he hadn’t caught a damn cold!

A day before going to the doc­tor for his four-month round of vac­cines, I noticed that Mark was start­ing to dis­play the com­mon symp­toms of a cold. “Let’s wait till tomor­row,” I fig­ured, “since we are going to the doc­tor anyway.”

I wasn’t overly worried—not sure whether that’s a good thing (I have faith in my mommy instinct) or a bad thing (I am a ter­ri­ble mother if I don’t rush my baby to the ER because he has a stuffy nose). I gave him a hot bath because I thought the steam would help, I checked his tem­per­a­ture and I cleaned his nose the best I could—not an easy task since he inher­ited his father’s tiny Chi­nese nose.

The doc­tor wasn’t wor­ried and she gave him his vac­cines after mak­ing sure he didn’t have a fever. Then, she rushed us out because she didn’t want to “spread the germs”.

Back home, Mark kept on protest­ing vehe­mently between two bouts of cough­ing: “agheeeu rheeu rheu”, as if say­ing “fuck man, what’s going on?”

Wel­come to the world of germs, baby. I know, it sucks.

Ever tried to tell a baby to 1) stop drool­ing every­where 2) warn us before cough­ing 3) blow his nose prop­erly? Yeah, that doesn’t work—babies are tiny germ-spreading machines. I knew that Feng and I would catch the cold as well, it was just a mat­ter of time. You can’t really quar­an­tine a baby. Or at least, we can’t quar­an­tine ours—he screams when­ever we leave him alone for more than sixty seconds.

We recre­ated a mini-rainforest envi­ron­ment in the bed­room by plug­ging in a small heater and using a humid­i­fier (hope­fully the police won’t think we have a mar­i­juana grow-up!). We bought one of these devices to suck the mucus out of a baby’s nose—Mark hates it but at least he helps him breathe bet­ter. We tried to give him some Advil pedi­atric drops—again, he hates the raisin taste but it can’t hurt him.

And then, Feng and I caught the cold. It was bound to happen.

Tylenol, Sinustab… we are like drug deal­ers at home. “I trade you an Advil for a Tylenol Extra Strength.” “Sure, but I need to fin­ish my Strep­sil first, my throat is killing me.”

We are boil­ing water non-stop and going through tis­sue boxes like a teen who has just dis­cov­ered you-know-what.

We com­plain more than Mark does. Well, in all fair­ness, Mark doesn’t have to 1) work 2) do the house­hold chores 3) take care of a baby, since he is a baby.

I hate being sick. Well, no one enjoys it (unless you call in sick when you are not actu­ally sick but that’s com­pletely dif­fer­ent. And between us, I believe in karma so I was always reluc­tant to play the sick card when I worked in an office envi­ron­ment) but there are bet­ter times to catch a cold. The sum­mer, for instance, where the hot weather truly helps.

Instead, we are stuck at home and it’s cold outside.

Ugh.