Mommy Immunity

The subject came up on a forum I'm on if moms have an immunity to feeling grossed out when their kids get sick. My gut reaction was no, but then I started to think about it.

Emily is a very healthy kid, so she has only thrown up a couple of times. The most recently was last October when we were in Texas for my cousin's wedding. If talk of puke disturbs you, you may want to skip the rest of this post.

For some reason, Emily got sick the night of the wedding. I woke up just before she started throwing up, but didn't manage to steer her away from her stuffed animals. So she  threw up all over them. This was a big concern to me since we were in Texas and were going to be boarding an airplane the next day.

I comforted her after cleaning her up. We were staying in a room with my dad and his wife, Esther. They stripped the bed for me and called room service for new sheets. She got sick again a little while after, so we had to repeat the cleaning and comforting. I don't remember being grossed out at all, I was just concerned about my sick little girl.

The next day, I spent a long while in the bathroom scrubbing barfed-on stuffed animals. Most of them were too badly dirty and were stuck in a bag to be washed when we got home. I did scrub at least one to the point that he could make the trip with Emily. The smell was awful as I was stuck in the bathroom trying to clean the poor stuffies. But I didn't feel sick then either because I wanted to make sure my daughter had at least some of her friends for the trip home.

As I thought about it, I guess I do have some sort of mommy immunity. When Emily gets sick, my primary thought is caring for her and cleaning up. Under normal circumstances, I get really grossed out by throw up. I get grossed up when my cats have a hairball. But it's different with my little girl.


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