The worst thing about being a Mom

I have to start by saying that the last week or two have been a bit on the stressful side for me. Last week I managed to sneak in a few days of vacation from work. We had no plans for doing anything special, but I felt like I really needed a few days off...and our house was so unbelievably filthy that I just couldn't take it any more. Anyway, the plan was to keep Ciara at home with me on Monday and have a fun little Mommy/daughter day together, and then she was going to go to school on Tuesday and Wednesday so that I could take care of the cleaning. The first glitch in the plans was that my husband came down with a nasty cold and opted to stay home from work so that he could go to the doctor. No biggie, it just meant that he was going to be requiring some of my attention. To make a long story much shorter, on the way to take Ciara to a local petting zoo my car decided to come to a complete halt in the center lane of a very busy street. We fortunately made it to the other side of the intersection we had been driving through before the car decided it was done. However, I was left sitting there staring in my rear-view mirror at the large black semi that was a little too close for comfort and wondering what exactly it was that I was supposed to do now. After a few seconds of panic I pulled myself together and managed to contact both the police and my husband. A police officer came and contacted a tow for me and made me feel considerably more safe, and then Kevin came and found us and we transferred Ciara and her carseat to his car and waited for the tow to arrive. It is very fortunate that I made the very quick decision to have the car towed back to the dealer because it turns out that my transmission died. What would normally cost about $2500 to fix is only going to cost us $750...we think because they know that a car with only 40k miles on it should not be in this condition and they don't particularly want a fight on their hands. Still...we don't exactly have an extra $750 sitting around at the moment. Plus now we're down to one car for who knows how long which is not entirely convenient. Making matters in our home all the more fun is the fact that Kevin has a pretty decent sinus infection as well as bronchitis.
I did manage to spend Tuesday and Wednesday doing some much needed Spring cleaning around the house. I absolutely can not stand cleaning, but it does make me feel so much better once it's done. It is so nice to look around and actually be able to see my floors for a change!
After spending two solid days cleaning I returned to work where I put in 20 hours in 2 days...so I entered the weekend feeling pretty spent.
Ciara has had a touch of a cough all week which tends to send me into a bit of a panic mode. You'll need a bit of history to understand why. Ciara spent her 1st Birthday in the PICU battling a serious case of pneumonia. She spent about 60 hours on continuous nebulizer treatments and an additional day slowly reducing treatments before being released.




This is definitely not an experience I ever want to repeat! Unfortunately, I had to return to work and was not able to keep her home after the first couple of days and she spent the next several months catching bug after bug from her little germ-factory friends at school. We went through more than a year of giving nebulizer treatments every couple of hours to battle the asthma that my heretofore extremely healthy child was now saddled with. So now every time my little girl has the slightest cold I begin to worry that we're going to have to go through the whole thing all over again.
Cut back to the present...
Yesterday Ciara woke up at about 6:45am and came crawling into our bed to watch Dragon Tales. As she cuddled up to me I heard the worst possible sound- a wheeze. Here's where it gets a little tricky though because it is very difficult to decipher a true wheeze from mucous rattling around due to an upper respiratory infection...or at least it is for me. My initial instinct was to call the doctor ASAP, but after a few minutes I had talked myself out of it. She was behaving normally, wanted to eat, didn't appear to have a fever, and although her cough didn't sound so great she didn't seem to be having difficulty breathing. Flash forward to this morning when hindsight is 20/20. She's certainly not in need of a trip to the ER, but she definitely does not sound good at all...and it's Sunday. Crap. Then I thought "ok, well we'll be alright because we still have all of her nebulizer stuff from before so as long as it hasn't expired we should be all set." After a quick inventory I discover that the albuterol is good for a few more months and the pulmicort has only just expired. I'm not thrilled about using an expired medication, but I'll do what I have to and given the fact that I have zero funds at the moment the expired pulmicort is just going to have to be good enough. All this is great until I suddenly discover that I can't find the nebulizer and burst into tears. I can't believe that I have stood by and let our finances get so bad that I can't even get medicine for our daughter when she is sick, and I really can't believe that I talked myself out of taking her to the doctor yesterday. After a few minutes of self-indulgent hysteria I did manage to calm down, locate the nebulizer, and begin giving her treatments. She even did a remarkably good job at tolerating having an uncomfortable mask stuck to her face and blowing vapor at her.
Of course right now she is in her bedroom absolutely refusing to settle down and take a nap (Thank you albuterol), still has no fever, and has been eating up a storm... so I know that she is ok for now. I'm just sort of wondering how many more stressful situations I need to deal with at the moment because I'm pretty sure that I've reached my max.