Winter Holidays brought brutal sickness

(Started this post last November, finished it today....7 months later!  Whoops!)

Fall Holidays......mmm my favorite!  This year however, I'm feeling a bit gipped.  The day before Halloween my body decided that I needed strep throat for the first time in my life.  I was supposed to be at Jack's Halloween program that day, but instead spent it at the doctor's office and pharmacy.  The next day, Halloween itself, I had volunteered to help with Jack's classroom party, my kids had their school costume parade (Jayci's first one ever!), Jayci had a dance party, and of course the annual Bruun Halloween dinner/grandkid pictures followed by trick or treating.  Not only was I sick, but highly contagious as well, and couldn't make it to any of it!  Thankfully I have amazing family who stepped in and were surrogate mothers/parents to my children, and made them feel special, worthwhile, and important.  My dad and mother-in-law went to Jack's program, my MIL filled in and helped in Jack's class party, my mom went to their parade and took Jayci to dance, and Jess took the kids to the party and trick-or-treating.  Thank you all!  I felt terrible to miss it all, but you definitely alleviated my worries.  I knew my kids would be forgiving, and still feel loved.

I failed at picture-taking. 

As Thanksgiving rolled around my kids started to get the sniffles, but on the morning of they seemed healthy, happy, and excited.  We enjoyed a delicious feast at Grandma Kristy's with more food and pie than we could handle.   Aside from Jack's runny nose everyone seemed fine and dandy, but by the time we got home that night Xander had a fever of 102, and Jack had a hoarse cough.  Long story short, all three kids were very sick the entire Thanksgiving break.  I don't think I've ever had as little sleep in a four night period as I did then, and if you know my kids that's definitely saying a lot!  Poor Xander had such a hard time breathing and had a painful cough.  He and I slept in the lazy boy for two nights because every time he'd cough he'd wake up crying, which was about every 10-30 minutes, and needed to be sitting up so he could breath instead of vomit.  Not fun!  Though I really do enjoy being the "fixer".  Most of the time he would finish his coughing fit then snuggle into my chest and fall back asleep, trusting me and being comforted by me.  That's what makes it all worth it!

2 days before Christmas each of us took our turn with a violent 24 hour stomach flu, Jess, Jace, and I being the caboose all in one night.  Wow.  Talk about tag teaming.  At one point Jace came running into our room and vomited on the floor, so I led her to the toilet to finish and tucked her back in while dry-heaving and dashing back to the bathroom.  Jess had gotten up to clean the carpet but then he and I had to pass each other as he was dry-heaving and making a mad dash to the bathroom while I finished cleaning, which then made me.........well..........you get the dirty picture.   This went on all night. We really just had to laugh about it when we were all well again.

New Years Day brought with it a round of colds.

2 weeks later was a lovely round of diarrhea for the kids.  Thankfully Jess and I avoided this one.  Well, actually we probably had the worst part, which was cleaning up the accidents.  Here's a post I posted on facebook during this glorious time:

" Our morning started out at 5:45 with a child (who's been plagued with diarrhea) coming into our room to inform us that his/her bed and pants were full of sickness, followed by the discovery of a basement flood from a backed up toilet, then the icing on the cake was stepping in and tracking around the puddle of cat urine, and realizing that he chose my suede boots as his morning dumping grounds. I kept my cool until that discovery, then I chased him around the house in a rage (boy, he knew he had it comin!) and chucked him out the door. Jess has been singing, "oh what a beautiful morning..." I don't share his enthusiasm. Im back in bed because all the smells are more than my pregnant body can handle! Happy crap-tastic morning! "

Unfortunately the worst was yet to come.  Another round of the flu for all of us!  Having a weakened immune system due to pregnancy, I could not overcome this one.  I was sick in bed, sicker than I think I've ever been, for weeks on end!  Finally, after realizing I had lost 10 lbs in 10 days, Jess took me into labor and delivery to make sure baby was ok and to see if anything could be done for me.  I was so dehydrated that it took about an hour just to get an IV in.  I was pumped with fluid and nausea meds and sent home to mend.  Needless to say I was a Nazi after all this about being around anyone sick.  I was terrified to go through any of it again!  I felt like we were just cursed and couldn't avoid it.  Such is life with young kids, pregnancy, public school, and church.  None of which can really be avoided!