Mommy's Meltdown

Rob and I are spending some time apart these days. He's sleeping in the guest room while Daniel and I tough out most of our days in the master bedroom. We see each other in passing, make a point to avoid each other by the widest possible margin, and limit our close interactions to my handling the doors to the fridge and the microwave on his behalf.

I know what you must be thinking when I start off a post like that, but we didn't have a fight or anything. Rob came down with a nasty flu on Sunday and we're just doing our best to keep Daniel and I from catching it.

It started out that he didn't feel well. He had a fever and chills. He removed himself from the master bedroom when he woke up that morning and moved to the guest room. At that point, Daniel and I were still hanging out in the living room and proceeding with life as usual. And when we spoke to the doctor after Rob's temperature hit 103.9, she told us that while Rob shouldn't hold the baby, there shouldn't be a problem with them being in the same room. She put us on anti-virals and told us to watch Daniel and call his pediatrician at the first sign of a fever. No problem, I thought. I got that 2:30 am call to the doctor for absolutely nothing out of the way already.

Monday...Daniel and I went on our first shopping trip together, to Wal-Mart to get daddy some medicine for his very sore throat. We got home. I put the carseat on the love seat, six feet away from Rob, while I dealt with the groceries. And that's when I hear one of the most violent sneezes I've ever heard. He's sick, so I don't think anything of it, until Rob mentions it later that he hoped it didn't spread to Daniel.

Shit. (Refer to "Pregnancy Brain Meets Oven Complex")

That afternoon, I spent some time looking up the lifespan of flu viruses on non-porus surfaces. The various web sources gave me a range...2 hours-2 WEEKS.

Double Shit.

That got me thinking about everything Rob and or his sneezing/coughing had possibly touched since Sunday. And about how Daniel and I were out there. I have Purell on my coffee table, but I don't typically use it after changing the channels on the tv. I rinse off Daniel's pacifier if it hits the floor, but not usually if it stays on the couch. I looked around my house and saw a minefield. Daniel has spent most of the past two days in his swing in the master bedroom. And I've spent much of the same time becoming a manic version of myself.

I started out with washing my hands, progressed to sanitizing door knobs, and moved onto bleaching my livingroom...wood tables, leather sofas, and laminate floor. And it didn't stop there.

I had run hot soapy water to wash the collection of empty bottles and breast pump equipment, but because I had poured the bleach solution I mopped with on top of them before that, I decided I better sterilize everything. And when I was done, there was a white ring in the pot. I asked Rob about it and he didn't have a clue. The same residue was inside the breast pump bottles, so I washed the bottles over before I used them. Then I set up Daniel's bottles for the night, but since the nipples were sterilized first and looked clean at a glance, I didn't worry about them.

4 am this morning, Daniel's 2-ounces into his bottle when it dawns on me what that white ring was. Dawn. As in, dish soap. So preoccupied was I at the thought of viruses that I somehow neglected to rinse the soapy water off the stuff before I dropped them into boiling water. So, 4:30 a.m., I'm rewashing everything.

And let's talk about pumping while we're here...my milk supply has dropped from 1 1/2 ounces to nothing in 48 hours. One of my sessions today pulled less milk than Daniel leaves in the nipple of a bottle when he's feeding. So now, I'm feeling quietly desperate because the immunities that I can give him just disappeared right when he needs them most.

Back to the flu...I woke up from a dead sleep last night at 2:30 am because I had a hot flash. And it resided in my chest all night, causing me a great deal of worry. Then, after I rewashed all the nipples, and while waiting for the bleach solution that I forced up the fridge water dispenser with a q-tip to kill whatever might be lurking there...I heard a flood of water pouring off the roof onto the front walk and thought, "Did I remember to close the driver's side window."

Yes, I went out and checked.

Today, I continued with my sanitizing efforts cleaning half of my kitchen and catching up on the laundry that got put aside yesterday because I was bleaching the livingroom. (It doesn't seem to matter how much I do, it's only half of what needs to be done.)

And then...right when we sat down to watch American Idol...I started feeling both chills and a hot flash simultaneously. I was running a fever again and felt both exhausted and scared. It lasted until after the show was over and I was in the middle of pumping. It was then it occurs to me. I'm going on 5 weeks postpartum. I've had two emotional meltdowns in as many days. My milk supply suddenly dropped to nothing. And these hot flashes are actually only a degrees or less above normal.

These point to ovulation (hoping and praying) not flu.