(m)other voices

Since Christmas, my two little ones have been passing viruses back and forth like a mad game of hot potato. At least once a week, I am pressing my lips against their foreheads, in that time-honored Mother’s Thermometer, to determine whether or not to dose out yet another syringeful of meds.

With my cheek to their hairlines, I can roughly estimate how high the fever is. I admit, however, to feeling a little sheepish when I call the doctor’s office with questions about the symptoms and I can’t back up my statement of ‘He’s had a fever for two days,’ with any sort of concrete numbers.

A couple of weeks ago, my two-year-old son endured one of the more excruciating of childhood viruses: an infected ear drum that eventually burst. For three days, we fought the fever with four-hour doses of medicine. When the medicine was in his system, he was a happy child. As it wore off, every four to five hours, he would become cranky and unreasonable (even moreso than the average two year old), until the next dose took hold and brought the fever down again.

At night, however, we didn’t wake him to dose him; we let him sleep until the chemicals wore off, and he woke, screaming. And I mean, screaming. In a way I’d never experienced before in my six years of parenting.

Sitting on the edge of my bed, I cuddled him in my arms, rocking and talking until the medicine reached his pain and he calmed enough to lie next to me and fall back to sleep. I did this for three nights, having no idea that it was his ear that was causing the pain. When he was medicated, he acted normally, and when he was in pain, he wouldn’t use words. No matter how I probed, he wouldn’t answer any of my questions about what hurt him. I just thought the fever was giving him a headache or other aches. And we’d had enough of those “just a high fever” viruses in our house that I assumed this was another one of those.

On the night his eardrum finally perforated, my mom was with him. She was babysitting while Peter and I each had separate meetings. My son’s pain must have been excruciating, because though he could fall asleep in my mom’s arms if she were upright, any time she laid him down, he flailed and screamed and shouted.  After we double dosed him on both medications, he finally fell asleep against my chest in my arms as I leaned against the pillows in bed.

It reminded me so much of those early, early days of motherhood, when my newborns would so contentedly fall asleep against my chest. I would half-sit in bed, one arm supported by pillows so I could fall asleep myself without losing grip.

That night, with my 28-pound helpless babe in my arms, I reenacted the motions of infancy:  patting his sleeper-covered bum, tucking my cheek against his head. Then, gradually sliding down to a horizontal position, slowly scooting him off of me onto the bed.

In the morning I noticed a thick ooze coming from his ear and took him to the doctor’s. Two more days of various kinds of medicine later, the fever and the pain-induced tantrums finally subsided. We returned, somewhat to normal, until the next virus descended on the boys a week later.

This will be the winter I remember for warmth. For the heat radiating from my sons’ foreheads in turn, as well as the warmth of their bodies cradled against mine as they seek comfort.  Because after the medicine, this is the best thing I can offer my children when they’re sick: a comfortable refuge in my own body, as if to absorb some of their heat and pain. This is one of the most basic privileges of being someone’s Mommy, to be the one who can bring relief to a fevered and troubled body. This will be the winter I’ll remember for warmth.