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Mother hugging a babyYou might have noticed an unusually long pause between my posts. This week I found out that when Eric gets really sick, I stop being a blogger and become just a mom with a primary goal to make it better for my little boy. Nothing else matters.

Another lesson I learned this week is that I need to trust my instincts more. Being a rational person makes it harder for me to put something above the logic, above the common sense. To many other moms listening to their maternal instinct comes easier and more natural. I wish I was so lucky.

It all started when Eric out of the blue started getting cranky and then his temperature started climbing up. He was teething and we had had the same symptoms in the past, so I wasn’t too worried about it and attributed all of the symptoms to teething. He didn’t sleep well at night and then the next day refused to let me go (literally spent the whole day in my arms), wasn’t eating and was only drinking. Another bad night, and then everything repeated again.

Even though in the beginning I was confident that it was a bad case of teething (he was cutting 4 teeth at once), on day 3, after seeing the temperature rising periodically to 39C, seeing that he’s too weak and exhausted by fever, I started doubting myself. Seeing my child, who never stops running and playing, just climb in bed and lie there felt really WRONG.

I turned over my medical books and didn’t find any serious illnesses with Eric’s symptoms, but it didn’t calm me down. I saw that he wasn’t getting better in 3 days – a log enough time even for me to start worrying and we booked an appointment with our doctor.

You can rightfully ask – what took you so long? Well, I try to stay away from doctors for a couple of reasons. First, if you go there for no real reason, it is very likely that you’ll come back home with an infection. Second, I don’t like the way they patronize me: “oh, here’s another overprotective mom, worrying herself sick over nothing”. Anyway, this time I was ready to risk the infection and the attitude.

And it’s a good thing I did. Because it turned out that Eric had a bad case of sore throat and had to be given antibiotics. His body couldn’t beat that infection on its own, he really needed help. When the doctor told me what was wrong with him, suddenly everything started to make sense – he was refusing food because it was too painful for him to swallow and he was rubbing his tummy because the infection gave him tummy aches. And while I am beating myself up for not going to the doctor sooner, one valuable lesson is learned – if I worry and feel that something is wrong, it’s not over nothing.

Do you trust your instincts? Did it come easy to you or did you struggle to acknowledge their existence? Did they ever fail you?