The Worst of it.

I got my daughter sick. A sick baby is the saddest, scariest thing ever. See little babies are obligate nose breathers, so when they cannot breathe through their noses, they think they cannot breathe.

Also they cannot nurse.

Combine those two things and what you have is a mom that just spent the last two nights trying to get a panicked baby to relax and realize she can still breathe. And that she will not die if she cannot nurse herself to sleep.

I've sucked her nose, squirted her with saline, communed with her in the bathroom with the shower running, held her, cuddled her, sung until I'm hoarse.

And she's not better yet.

She's still screaming. That has been her main way to communicate this intense discomfort - a high pitched, rock your eardrums kind of scream. It's maddening.

I've also realized that at 2 in the morning, when my husband is at work, when I'm spent and tired and cannot do it anymore, when the baby is scared and screaming and cannot sleep because she is so uncomfortable and when I have tried everything that I can think of. Those are the loneliest moments of my life. Lonelier than all my teen years put together, an isolation and a feeling of helplessness that I would not wish on my worst enemy.

And even if there was someone to call - a sick baby only wants its mother. There you go, an interdependence that there is no solution for. A relationship that for better or worse is the definition of closeness. Irreplaceable. And for those that have lost that relationship, it is wounding. Unhealable. I have watched it too many times - that loss.

So as I head into my birthday tomorrow, everything that I'd been hoping for has changed. I don't care about time to myself. I just want a healthy baby. I just want to not see that wild-eyed look again anytime soon.

And I want my mommy.