My dream job

Evan had his second asthma attack in as many weeks yesterday evening. Still no asthma diagnosis (I'm a little unclear exactly one has to do to get an asthma diagnosis if 2 incidents in 2 weeks don't do the trick), but the pediatrician who saw him last night and again today said that she suspects we'll be spending a good deal of time bonding with the nebulizer this winter, diagnosis or no diagnosis.

We managed to stay out of the hospital this time by waking every 3 hours throughout the night to give Evan breathing treatments. The fact that we all got to go home to our own beds was good news, but the plan to keep us there was somewhat less than ideal for me. I just don't do the night time waking thing well. Even when my children were infants, I would wake up only long enough to scoop them into bed with me, offer up the goods and fall fast asleep as they sucked away. Had I been able to do the same thing now, I gladly would have. Unfortunately, I could not figure out a way to get my body to emit albuterol the way it used to emit breast milk. And so I found myself standing over Evan's crib at 4 a.m. last night, waving a nebulizer wand in his face and trying to will the medicine to flow out faster so that I could get back to bed where I belonged.

A nebulizer apparently works at only one speed no matter how tired its operator, and so my mind had plenty of time to wander as the machine slowly worked its magic. I found myself thinking of a conversation that I'd had with Evan's pediatrician after the first asthma incident. "We usually hospitalize kids if they need treatments less than 3 hours apart because it's just too much to ask the parents to do," she'd told me. "That's not your job." I'd been surprised at her choice of words. "It's all my job," I had replied without thinking. "I'm his mother."

My words had been automatic in the light of day, but as I recalled them in the darkness of night, they somehow seemed far more profound than they actually had been. After a lifetime of dreaming of motherhood and four years of struggling with the highs and lows of realizing that dream, here it was at its most basic. My child was sick. I held the power in my hands to make him better. It was honestly my pleasure to stand there and help him, I realized; sleep or no sleep. And furthermore, it was my job.

I stood there for what seemed like forever, listening to the hiss of the nebulizer and smiling at the sight of my sleeping son as I proudly did my job as his mother. And then when the machine sputtered dry, I kissed him on the forehead and I crept back to bed.