topic: Puke Deux

Michael: There’s not much you can do if your baby throws up in his or her seat in your car. It can be pretty gross, but thank goodness their stomachs are pretty small, and since they’re strapped into their car seats pretty well, most of it ends up on their bellies—they don’t lean way forward and heave all over the floor, thankfully!

I recently found myself standing over a hose in the driveway of Grandma’s house spraying off the baby’s car seat. It had been a long, nine-hour drive and it was the last thing I felt like doing. There were cold drinks in the fridge, but I had to get the defiled thing out of our car and hosed off before the incident became a permanent part of our future car rides. Mom was inside giving baby a bath in spite of her screaming for food. Yes, it was dinnertime and her stomach was now empty, but we felt it important to get the regurgitated macaroni and strawberries out of her hair before getting on with our lives. Grandma agreed.

When the food had come up, our younger boy had screamed, “Mom—she just puked!” I quickly pulled off the twisting mountain road and Anne hopped out, baby wipes flying. Our seven and nine-year-old boys were appalled at the situation. Stressed, irritated, and frustrated, I was incapable of slowing my mind in its search for a cause, and even for blame—that’s what stress does to you. My mind flashed back to the baby chugging on her sippy cup in my rearview mirror just a few moments before. Who had given her that? Chugging a sweet juice probably wasn’t a good idea as we twisted around narrow mountain roads in the filtered afternoon sunshine. Wasn’t Anne to blame, then? Had she not given her that juice, this might not have happened!

Cool it, I told myself as I held open the grocery bag and Anne tossed in dirty wipes, the baby’s blanket, and eventually the baby’s clothes, too. I let my emotions get back under control as the moment settled in. No one spoke as cars whooshed past.

Back on the road, Anne held the baby in the way-back seat for the last ten tortuous miles to Grandma’s mountain house. The baby wiggled and screamed, but Anne held on. Sometimes that’s all you can do.

Anne: