Toddler Health Commandments

1. Thou shalt behave completely normally throughout the day - playing, eating and drinking just fine, then wait until your parents think you are safely asleep for the night to throw up your dinner all over your crib, your teddy and yourself.

2. Thou shalt not appear relieved at having emptied the offensive contents of your stomach, and wait until Mommy puts you down in your fresh crib before repeating the throwing up procedure.

3. Thou shalt continue to retch and heave unproductively for two hours (since you have eliminated that which would have sustained a small country, from your tiny body).

4. Thou shalt fool your parents into thinking that all is settling down by starting to fall asleep on your mother's lap - and giving her that double edged sword of feeling so sorry for you because you are unwell, but secretly relishing in the freedom she has to stroke your face and your hair, to hold your tiny feet in her palm, and trace the outline of your fingers in hers, without protesting.

5. Thou shalt disturb this calm in an instant by heaving again and necessitating a quick sprint to the bathroom sink - where bile is all that comes up.

6. Thou shalt proceed to go limp, and refuse to engage with Mommy or Daddy when we try to coax even the tiniest reaction from you, let your head and limbs flop and show absolutely no interest in your most favourite comfort object, teddy (the spare, non puked upon teddy - for Mommy is very clever and has prepared for instances such as these).

7. Thou shalt unceremoniously freak both your parents out so they start asking 'should we call the doctor?', prompting Mommy to phone Auntie Suzy for a second opinion - and she concurs that we need to phone the doctor.

8. Thou shalt [of course] do all of this out of office hours so that when the doctor calls back her advice is 'he needs to be seen, you must take him to the Emergency Room'.

9. Thou shalt perform your 'rag doll' routine for the Triage Nurse and get her just as worried as Mommy, so she asks for a second opinion. In the 15 seconds that it takes the second Triage Nurse to appear - you miraculously recover the use of your limbs, your head and your eyes and you're trying to sit up as if to say 'sick?, me?, nahhh'. Triage nurse is relieved, but still doesn't like your colour and sends us to wait in the huge waiting room crammed with people too poor to see a regular doctor, a situation that Mommy could write about for a long time! and backing up the doctors so that we wait for ages without anyone seeing us. Just as Mommy starts to question whether you should be in the ER or not, thou shalt throw up once more for good measure, just in case going home might have been an option at this point.

10. Finally, at almost 2am, when you decide you would much prefer to lie down in your bed and sleep, thou shalt begin to protest your snuggly place on Mommy's tummy, throw the wet washcloth from your brow and thrash teddy around in case the strength of your distaste for your surroundings wasn't getting through clearly enough.


Satisfied that you'd be just as well off sleeping this off at home, and happier that you were a bit better than you were when you arrived, Mommy decided to call it quits. Leaving the coughing kids, and those kids happily running around causing havoc, with whom there didn't seem to be much wrong at all, to tie up the ER staff some more - we both craved our beds and some rest and TLC is probably all you really need anyway - we went home.

But, please, Son, next time - try and fit this in between 8am and 4:30am, okay? So much easier on all of us.