So, the thing is... I've been engaging in Germ Warfare.

We have had one of those summers where we just seem to have had more than our share of sickness.  Well, actually, maybe we're making up for lost time.  During Ana's first three years, she was sick so seldom that it was almost unfair.  She's only been on antibiotics ONCE in her life (and let me tell you, once was ENOUGH!) and she's never even had an ear infection.  She had one stomach virus and a few colds and that was just it.  For three years.

Jane, of course, has already had two ear infections.  Which has made me so paranoid that I keep taking her to the doctor to have her ears checked only to be told that she's just teething.  The last time I called to make an appointment, the front desk (no lie) RECOGNIZED MY VOICE  --I never had to tell them my name!  I was MORTIFIED!  (But I still took Jane in and yes, she was still just teething.)  And those trips to the doctor make me crazy --especially the ones they call Well Baby Checks.  That's where you take your pristinely healthy baby in for a check up and come home with a kid with a raging fever and some unidentifiable rash.  I refuse to let my kids play with any of the toys in the waiting room because who KNOWS what illnesses they are harboring.  We sit there, on the edge of our seats, careful not to touch anything, on alert for any child who is really sick who might be breathing in our direction.  I know kids get sick, I really do.  But if you’d ever had to give my kids medicine, you’d understand.  I live in fear.

With both of my girls, the only effective method of dosing them requires their dad and me to work in tandem.  One of us holds the victim firmly down and the other pries her mouth open and shoots the stuff down her little throat.  It's worse with Ana because she is usually crying and begging us to “please stop, please stop” which makes the process so heinous that I feel ill myself.  Well, THAT and the fact that she's very talented at closing her throat and spewing forth the medicine all over us --a trick she has somehow taught to ten-month-old Jane.  So we have to reload and try again.  It's horrible but as my husband says (with that firm set to his jaw that we all respect and fear), “We are the parents and this is our job and if we have to do every single dose this way, then, by God, that's what we'll do.”

Not that knowing what we have to do stops us from trying to get creative.  We once made pancakes, poked holes in them, drizzled the dreaded Augmentin all over them and covered them in syrup.  (That worked exactly once.) I've pulverized pills and put them into the filling in a sandwich cookie. I've been known to slip the medicine into peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, into milk (the only beverage other than water that Ana will drink) and I actually did a little happy dance when Ana finally decided (on her third birthday) to try ice cream.  Now THERE'S a good medium for medicine.

I was all excited when I saw that so many companies had come out with chewable versions of their cold medications.  Ana takes a chewable multi-vitamin every day so I thought taking these tablets would be a breeze.  She tried them willingly the first time and actually GAGGED on them.  We tried several other brands.  Then we gave her the choice between being held down and chewing the medicine.  She chose being held down!  So I decided to try those chewable things myself.

Oh my GOSH!  They are VILE!! ICK!!  Gross!  Disgusting!  I haven't been able to ask her to take one since.  I also tried the liquid version and those have so much sugar added to them that they are palatable but barely.  What we do now is to mix it in with her nightly milk and I always tell her.  “I've mixed your medicine into your milk so we don't have to use the syringe.  Drink it all, please.”  Nothing like a little implied threat to make the medicine go down. (Isn't there a song about that?)

I still live in fear of having to administer antibiotics.  So I've become this CRAZY WOMAN, armed with anti-bacterial wipes and an amazing radar to detect any child with a runny nose within a five-foot radius.  I think I might be turning into Howard Hughes.  We ALL (even Jane) rub that waterless antibacterial stuff on our hands after we've been in a public place and I now officially wash my hands often enough during the day to qualify for OCD treatment. And still we get sick.

I was complaining to a friend recently about how much I resent people who take their sick kids out into the world.  We stopped going to our beloved Gymboree classes when Ana was almost two because every time she went, she got sick.  It used to make me so mad that people would take their clearly contagious kids to a totally voluntary event like that and infect all the healthy kids.  I mean, when my kids are sick, we STAY HOME!  I ranted away for a while until I noticed that my friend, who is at LEAST as protective of her child as I am of mine, was smiling at me with great sympathy.  “Well, Barb, I think that you're probably the only one who keeps her kids home when they have colds,” she said gently.  “Now that Ana's in school, she's going to be getting sick more often and if you keep her home for every sniffle, she'll never get to class.”

Truer words have never been spoken.  It took exactly two days of pre-school before Ana came down with her first cold.  I suppose Jane will be next and I'll be calling the pediatrician to see if she'll just reserve my usual parking space out front.  (As my friend Mary says “They should just give you a big pink vat of that Amoxicillan right at the hospital after you give birth, put it in one of those pump bottles (like fast food ketchup), and host a few classes on Detecting An Ear Infection So We Don't Have See You Every Week.”)

And so here I am, about to eat my words (no small feat) and send my Ana to school with a cold.  I'm not COMPLETELY throwing the welfare of the other kids out the window.  I wouldn't send her if she was clearly infectious or running a fever or covered with little pink spots or anything.  She's just a little cranky and a little stuffed up.  I hate to do it, though.  I sort of feel like this is the thin edge of the wedge that will bring about a complete crash of my parenting standards --one day I’m sending my sick kid to school and the next thing you know, we're eating Happy Meals twice a day and watching soap operas together. 

I know, I know, it's not that bad.  And I know that I've probably done her a disservice by keeping her so sheltered up until now --it looks like it's going to be a very long school year from the illness perspective.  If I had kept her in Gymboree classes, she might at least have some resistance to all the illness going around now, and Jane wouldn't be exposed to every single cold before she's even one year old.

But on the other hand, while Ana’s at school this week, I can probably disinfect my house.

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(c) Barbara Cooper 2001

Barbara Cooper is the mother of Ana (3) and Jane (ten months).  She lives in Austin, Texas and she washed her hands before sending this column out.