Mucus, ho!

May 16th, 2006

Ever been to the mall or the grocery store and seen that child with the snotty nose? You know the one I mean. The kid with strings of glistening mucus pouring forth, delicate strands of the stuff forming a bridge between the nostrils and the fingers? This this the child that everyone looks at and immediately has to suppress the gag reflex as they cut a wide path around it and the equally disgusting parent who is frantically attempting to stem the flow with a bib, a corner of a blanket, or if desparate, their own sleeve.

This is my child.

Lola seems to have acquired a rather nasty cold. The kind of cold that doesn't really cause much of a medical issue...no real fever, no hacking cough. This is the worst kind of cold. It is the type that only causes severe annoyance to the baby without sufficiently knocking her on her ass enough for her to just sleep through it. I didn't realize that a human infant could produce so much mucus! I tried to keep up with it by using the dreaded bulb syringe, until Lola figured out how to defend herself from this offensive device very effectively. She crinkles up her face and viciously swats the bulb, and if by some miricle of God I actually get it anywhere near her nostril, she screams like I am sticking her with a hot poker. Afterwards she won't forgive me for several minutes, shooting me scathing looks and refusing to nurse. The only alternative is to continually wipe her sore little nose with whatever is handy. Several of her toys and blankets really need to go through the wash. This constant nose wiping is made even more enjoyable by the amazing ability of Lola's boogers to retreat back inside her nostrils the moment that they catch wind of an incoming wipe. It is like a cruel disgusting game of whack-a-mole, only your prize for getting the "mole" is a snotty rag and a yelling baby.

Then we discovered baby Sudafed (also comes laced with baby Tylenol), which is a double edged sword. Sudafed is a baby mucus drying powerhouse with the lovely side effect of ramping her up like a little meth addict. Ramping up the baby has been the last thing we want to do, as the constant stream of post nasal drip has been annoying the holy living crap out of her and has not allowed her to sleep more than an hour or two at a time. The first night I gave up and made a little nest downstairs on the couch and allowed her to use me as a human sleep elevation device so that she could actually get a little shuteye. Did you know that there is a version of the Today show on at 4 in the morning? It is called the Early Early Today Show. It is really quite good.
This sleeplessness lasted about a week. Consequently, Mommy's bags under her eyes became large enough to hide several dollars in loose change. Also, Mommy had to start wiping two sore noses, as she caught Lola's cold. This added nicely to the sleep deprivation. Sadly, I was just starting to recover from her last little bout of sleeplessness when she sprung this one on me. Arg.
Finally, just when Mommy and Daddy thougt that we might crack, the cold seems to be fading away like a bad bad dream. The long tendrils of shining mucus are slowly being replaced by dried crusty boogers in the shape of stalagmites growing from her little nostrils. No longer must we depend on the sudafed for peace. Amazingly she has returned to her regular two naps a day, up once during the night schedule without much fuss.

First real cold...another milestone....we all survived!