Wednesday night I was officially anointed into motherhood.

I know, I know…you’re thinking, “wait a second there Katie, haven’t you been a mother for two and a half years?”

Yes, I suppose I have carried the title with me.  I include it in any bios I write. In fact…yup…if you look over to the right there by my smiling face, I include mother in my bio.

But I have carried this title arrogantly.  I skipped through the past couple years (ok, clearly if you know my history you know it wasn’t exactly skipping) without knowing what I know now.

Without having experienced what I did the other night.

People?  Wednesday night, my baby boy…my sweet little guy…the two and a half year old curly-haired ball of cute that I call my own….

Puked all over my couch with me watching.

And Cort was gone to class.

Why does he wait to throw his bodily fluids around the house until his daddy is gone?  WHY?

I would like to say I was more prepared than I thought I would be for the first bout of flu in our house.  And I guess in one way I was.  But mostly?  I had no idea.

Bodily fluids gross me out like no other.  Even my own.  Seriously.  I always said that when Eddie is sick, Cort would have to handle it because there was absolutely no way I could deal with someone else’s vomit.  NO WAY.  I even pass as many poopy diapers off to him as possible.

I just have a weak stomach and wicked gag/barf reflex.

So last night, when Eddie was standing on the couch talking to me while I finished making his dinner, and suddenly he was throwing up everywhere, you would think I lost it and threw up too.

But no.

I calmly took a towel to him and caught the rest of the huge deluge of partially digested hotdogs and chocolate milk.  When he was done, I stood him on the linoleum in the kitchen, stripped his puked on clothes, and put him in a warm bubble bath assuring him the whole time that it was totally ok and that it happens sometimes.

He didn’t cry once.

Just looked at me with fear and confusion.

I wanted to blink and have the smell and huge mess disappear, but instead, Eddie told me all about his boats and the bubbles while I mopped up chunks and puke juice from the couch.

Thankfully we have leather furniture.

Unfortunately the boy got it right in the spot where two cushions meet AND where they meet the back of the couch.

So I pulled it all apart and mopped that up too.

The only fabric spray we had was leftover from when we had the cat (for pet stains), so I sprayed that on the inside of the couch and scrubbed.

After the bath we hunkered down with some crackers and water and just snuggled.  Until he told me he wanted the bowl.

So I took his pipey and lamby and set them aside and put the towel and bowl by him.  He hung on and within moments all the crackers and water came out.

He kept looking at me with the biggest, saddest eyes filled with confusion and fear.  They seemed to beg me to make it stop and help him feel better.

All I could do was rub his back and tell him how brave he was.

He mumbled back to me, “bwave yike daddy?”

Yes, baby.  Brave like daddy.

Not one tear escaped his eyes.

I wiped his mouth and he tucked an arm around me.  He was exhausted.

I was exhausted.

By a stroke of luck, Cort was able to get out of class way early, and he walked through the door at 8:30pm.  He scooped up his limp little boy and rocked him to sleep.

When he came out of the nursery, I broke down.

I was so sad for Eddie.  All I wanted to do was go back in that room, pick him up, and hold him while he slept.  Like I did when he was a baby.

I wanted to take all that fear away from him.

I never wanted him to have to look at me like that again.  I never wanted to feel that helpless again.

And I just cried.

While I handled the actual puke way better than I ever thought, I never expected the emotional upheaval of having a sick child.

I never knew how helpless I would feel.

I never realized that watching your child experience something scary and/or painful is like watching a sort of innocence leave them.

I have read the words of parents of children going through so so SO much scarier and painful things.  I have had two and a half years of blissful ignorance.

If this is how shaken up I get when my little guy pukes, what happens if, God forbid, something worse happens?  If he brakes something or need surgery or…or…gets really sick.

That night Cort sent me to bed with a Tylenol pm because I couldn’t stop crying.

As my brain fought sleep, that familiar brick of anxiety settled on my chest.  Breathing was difficult.  My brain was swirling.  Tears flowed.

But Cort held my hand, told me I was a wonderful mother and I did everything right, and I sank into a fitful sleep.

I felt so dumb.  It was only the flu.  It was only a bit of barf.

But I couldn’t shake the way he looked at me.

My heart hurt from that look.

That look turned me into a mother.

A mother anointed by puke.