Sick Leave.

I’ve been careful to not fall ill during this pregnancy but after 6 months keeping germ-free, my body has finally succumbed to a particularly nasty flu bug that one of the kids gave to me. I can’t say for sure because they were both ill over the weekend but I’m pretty sure it’s Kirsten since she’s the one who insisted on holding my face to sleep and then sneezed globs on her germs straight into my mouth.

The poor girl was grouchy and miserable and the only thing that helped her fall asleep was being 2 inches away from my face. It was an unusual request but she seemed to really want it and according to my parenting manual, when your sick kid needs to breathe into your face in order to fall asleep, you just do it.

Now when you’re that close to somebody’s face, you can tell when a sneeze is coming. Her face scrunched up and I was about to take cover but she had like an iron grip on my cheeks so I froze, closed my eyes and took the hit.

I’m typically more dexterous in dodging germy sneezes but these kinds of point blank ones are almost impossible to dodge.

On the bright side, it did help her fall asleep and she woke up feeling much better but on the not so bright side, no amount of mouth-scrubbing and vitamin-popping could undo the damage that one sneeze did to my immune system.

Now my head is throbbing and my throat is on fire and I just want to lie down and make terrible groaning noises.

While I lie down, I’m going to think about whether this was a heroic or incredibly stupid move. Probably both.