In case you didn’t realize it, I live in a small town called Dülmen.
This year, we are celebrating our 700th anniversary.
That’s like, a super duper long time, don’tcha think?
I had hoped to offer up this cool little town as a meeting place for the Annual Whiny Expat Meetup – but it looks like we will be in Minsk for most of the year.
I am not sure exactly when that will happen, but BJD and I anticipate a move in early March. February is chock full (is it chock or chalk – I think chock, right?) of birthdays, with Giant Baby turning 2 on the 27th.
Speaking of her, I have to say I am so in love with her. She has taken to sign language beautifully – and signs as often as she can, mixed with spoken words. She enjoys singing and making music. Her most recent pleasure came from opening up the drawer with the pots and pans and pulling out two lids and banging them together. (quite loudly I might add)
And she is in absolute love with her older brother – who has his moments of typical older sibling don’t wanna be around you-ness. As a whole though, he is turning into such a wicked cool person, complete with a temper (thanks to me – hey I have to have some influence in his life cause that boy is a carbon copy of his dad).
Last week, Bubba Joe had a horrible case of asthmatic bronchitis. It flared up the night before BJD left for Minsk for the week. I took little man to his ped who upped the dosages of salbuterol (I think that’s the german equivalent to alb*terol), followed up by his inhaler (with steroids) and if it got worse, to give him a steroid suppository.
He hates those.
He does okay with the breathing treatments – every 3 hours was about the right time for him to have his next dose. But that night, with his dad gone and knowing how bad it was the night before (he barely slept because of his coughing), I made the decision to give him a suppository.
He hated it.
And me.
He started crying. Poor kid.
I started crying.
Which led us to hugging and crying together. Giant Baby had no clue what was going on, but kept signing mommy cry … cry, no cry.
I explained to Bubba that I knew it was uncomfortable but that the medicine was necessary for his lungs to function properly. That it hurt me too to see him in pain and worse, to cough so much.
And it brings back all those emotions that I have been facing the past 4.5 years … before I would have felt like an absolute failure. It was my body that was damaging him in utero, my body which failed to do the one thing that only a woman can (squat and give birth) – such a basic principal yet I failed.
I am not so good at accepting my failures.
But this time, I just dealt with it. I handled it as it needed to be and none of it was overwhelming. I cried because he was so angry that I had to give him his medicine “there”. And he cried because he has a hard time figuring out the right words (much less the right language) to explain how he is feeling.
My depression is subsiding.
I know it.
I can feel it.
I am still on meds – and will be for some time. Especially if/when we move. But I anticipate that by the end of 2012, I will be able to manage my life even better than I did last week.
LifeDeathPreeclampsia's Blog 