what's worse than a sick baby? sick mommy.

For the second time since Baby Girl was born, I am down for the count with an ugly bug.  Granted, the first one was worse - a stomach flu, which both my husband and I got at the same time, causing us to call my mom, who mercifully came to the rescue so we could throw up all night without worrying about the 6-month old upstairs.

But this one is hanging on a lot longer.  Not a stomach bug, this time, but some kind of nasty virus that gave me a fever and aches and chills and a terrible, awful, no good, very bad cough which hurts like the devil.  I feel like somebody punched me in the ribs all night long.  Uggggggh.

Some lessons I have learned over the past few sick days:

• I have a lot less patience when I am sick.  So that, when my husband came home after picking up Baby Girl from daycare (THANK HEAVENS for daycare) yesterday and asked, "What am I supposed to do for dinner?" I jumped down his throat like he had suggested I cook a 5-course meal.  I mean, he had a slightly irritated tone in there.  But my response may have been, perhaps, a little overstated.  Maybe.
• The worst part about being sick is that you can't kiss your adorable baby.
• Oh - and that you can't enjoy two nights in a row of her sleeping through the night because you are up every 20 minutes coughing.
• Also, when you go to the doctor because you are paranoid that you have pneumonia (I don't), and everyone who comes in the room to check on you is wearing one of those surgical masks, it's a little disconcerting.
• The pharmacist is never slower than when you are huddled in the corner, waiting for your cough syrup, wishing you could crawl under a bus.
• I think the baby gets a very minor version of these bugs and then, in the transition between her and us, they morph into Nearly Deadly Bedridden viruses.  Don't get me wrong - I'm very glad she's had the minor kinds.  But maybe they could stay that way next time.  (Or, you know, avoid us altogether?  Yeah.  Probably not.)
• The fierceness of this cough has demonstrated to me that not all is as well as I thought down there in Ladyparts Land.  I will need to do more Kegels.  Because it's no fun when you cough and then...yeah.  You get it.
• But the good thing about having a nasty cough when you are no longer pregnant is that you can have a hot toddy.

And on that last note, I think I'll go make myself said hot toddy and crawl off to bed.