It's Just A Friggin' Cookie!

I am tired. Really, fucking tired. I'm functioning on a modest, three and a half hours of sleep, I smell like vomit, I have two beds completely stripped of sheets and I still made it to work..Huzzah. Why didn't I shower before work, you might ask? Because, it would've involved an intricate pulley and lever system to keep me vertically inclined. Evan had pizza for dinner at 6:30 last night. He had it again, at 2:30 this morning, though I'm sure he didn't enjoy it nearly as much. I got up, stripped him, stripped his sheets and promptly made the decision, we would NOT go to the ER, as I believed this was nothing more than a bug. I brought him into our bed, an act I only do in two instances. 1. Fatigued desperation. 2. Complete pity. We watched some "Little Bear", had some "icy, coldy water" and I started to drift back to sleep. No less than 20 minutes later, the water made a reappearance, along with the remainder of his pizza and salad. I washed him off, cleaned up the mess and once again, reiterated that we would NOT go to the ER. This had to be a bug...right? More, "Little Bear", more water, more vomit. Should we take him to the ER? No...no, there was no need to sit anywhere for over 6 hours to be told what I thought I already knew. It will pass. He'll be fine. We move onto "Thomas" and he starts going comatose, I'm not awake, but still registering Thomas's annoying, blue blur and he vomits again. Now, I'm getting worried. Where is this powerful, mother's instinct that's supposed to help me know when somethings very wrong with my son and when I'm making mountains out of mole hills? Why can't I decide what recourse to take? How many sheets can I change? If I take him to the ER now, do I have to put on a bra and get dressed, or are puke dampened pajama's acceptable,given the environment we'd be entering? I didn't sleep again, but Evan finally did. Right there, in the crick of my arm with no idea, that I hadn't the faintest clue the right thing to do. Just trusting that I'd know how to make him feel better. I kept waiting for the instinct to kick me toward any direction. My intuition is keen. My instinct, not so much. I've never been a decisive person and it hasn't improved over time. My instincts, in regard to my son, don't come naturally to me and they're supposed to, aren't they? As I sat there at 5:45 in the morning, smelling bile, watching my son and listening to the morning "Eye Opener" tell me what to expect from mother nature, I realized I don't trust my instinct one bit. This was solidified by the hesitant but urgent, phone call I placed to my mother, who told me what I was already thinking, but needed approval on, for some reason. I'm pretty sure that part of it was that I just flat out didn't want to go into the ER...for obvious selfish reasons...and that caused me to question my motives, which then caused me to question my instinct. For the most part, though, I just felt like no matter what I did, I wouldn't be right and I hate that almost three years after his arrival, I'm still not sure if I'm making all the right decisions for him. It goes well beyond emergency room visits and bleeds into everyday. Am I feeding him the right things? Am I teaching him the right things? Am I giving him too much attention, not enough attention, too many sweets, too much television...the list goes on and on, which I'm sure every person with children feels, all the time. Am I putting way to much stress and expectation on every decision I make? It all goes back to that fear of mistakes every mom I know succumbs to, whether or not they want to. If I let him have a cookie after lunch and ice cream after dinner, am I setting up an unhealthy precedent for his future eating habits? It's a God damn cookie! Why can't it just be a cookie and not a gateway to obesity? Sometimes I think our doctors, teachers and the media are sucking our instinct right out of us. They question our judgement calls and so, we question our judgement calls. Every little thing we allow, every little pleasure we give them or give ourselves through them, could represent some potential harm to their adult well-being. I, for one, am going to start letting a cookie, just be a cookie. The miracle potion for confidence in my instincts is a deaf ear to public opinion.