Stay At Home Mom vs Working Mom Part 2

This is the second half of a two-part blog so if you haven't read Part One, you should :)

Later that day, I arrived at my brother’s for dinner and my boys were still fast asleep. Aiden hasn’t taken a nap in - ohh, goodness, I can’t even remember the last time. I figured they just had a late night with the cousins and a life without naps just caught up to him. Also, I absolute hate waking up either one of my boys because an interruption in their sleep somehow equates to the devil awakening in their little handsome bodies. My brother suggested waking them up so they could play and I immediately negated that silly notion. What? Crazy!! After Tristen had been up for awhile and I glanced at the time reveal a late 5:00pm (for a nap!), did I decide to try to wake Aiden up.

At first touch, I immediately noticed that his little body was burning up. I had never felt such a high fever before. My brother’s fiance took his temperature and it was 105 degrees F. I quickly gave him some Tylenol to lower his temperature. Jarod and my brother’s fiance tried talking to him while I Googled dangerous temperatures for children, even though I already knew that the temperature was much too high.

We waited a few minutes. I was hoping that it would lower itself but it wasn’t going down enough. It lingered at the higher end of 104. Aiden’s eye rolled back in his socket, the light of life laid listlessly in his eyes and his answers to any of our questions were reciprocated by off-the-wall answers.

I asked him what his name was.

No response.

I asked him how old he was.

No response.

And when I went to the bathroom, Jarod and my brother’s fiance asked him if he was hungry.

After a few moments, he replied yes and when asked what he wanted to eat he pointed to the light fixture on the wall and then towards my brother’s fiance’s chest. They laughed but at the same time, we all grew worried.

First and foremost, no, I don’t breastfeed my four-year-old and I promise nor will I ever do so.

However, all of this was scaring the crap out of Jarod and I. We both started worrying about irreversible brain-damage. I knew that he would live but the very possibility that he wouldn’t reach his own capabilities, his own intelligence because of this, was devastating.

We rushed him to the Emergency Room, which thankfully was only a few minutes away. They checked him in, gave him more medicine, lowered his temperature to a more respectful temp and concluded that he had strep throat and the flu. Our baby came back to life. It’s astonishing how different he was with a high temperature in comparison to how he acted immediately after his temperature lowered.

In all honesty, I shed a few tears of relief and happiness in the hospital. Sometimes I think how irrational it is to have children. We give so much of ourselves, including all the material, tangible items in this world, but even more than that, we consciously decide to love someone so much that their own well-being overshadows our own.

Me and my Aids (Christmas 2010).

I believe Elizabeth Stone hit it on the head when she said that, “Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

I hate to think of myself as someone that has to have a bad event remind me of what’s really important in life. I strive to be a person that finds happiness in simplicity as well as a person that doesn’t take a single thing for granted.

I love my children so very much and I do miss the parts of me that don’t include them but I, truly, wouldn’t be anything without them.

I’m a Gemini, which is symbolized by twins, by two people and subsequently, there is always a contradictory, corresponding desire to every single thought, idea, whim and action to me. I want the best of each world. I want to have a fulfilling, successful professional life and I want to be a stay-at-home-mom but I, simply cannot have both.

And the truth is, I really don’t want both. I want exactly what I have. I want this.

My babies on Easter 2012 :)