12 pounds: mostly baby, some snot

So we're coming up on about a month of on-again off-again sick baby. Nothing serious – no fever, no 360 degree head spinning, no pea soup on the ceiling – mostly occasional fussiness and a nearly constant flow of snot and goo out of her little head.

This means that several times a day, Babe-O has a date with Mommy, a bottle of nasal saline, and her little blue snot sucker.

It goes like this: saline up the nose, screaming, snot sucker up the nose, screaming, suck – squirt, suck – squirt, screaming…you get the idea. Technically, I think it qualifies as waterboarding, but that's for Geneva to decide.

Whatever you call it, I feel bad that she has to go through it and I feel bad that her Mom has to be the bad guy about it so often.

I did a little snot-sucking while I was doing her bath tonight and it pretty much broke my heart. And that's without the saline.

The doctor insisted that it wasn't a big deal and that we should pretty much expect her to go through about 10 colds a year. If they all run as long as this one, that doesn't leave a lot of time for being healthy. That said, I'm hoping that this one runs its course and she never has another cold as long as she lives. Or at least as long as I live.

Plus, there's the whole possibility of allergies, which would be a huuuuuge pain, considering our three-dog, one-cat household. Fortunately, we are told that kids who grow up on farms are dramatically less likely to develop allergies than those yuppied-out, paved-road-driving, indoor-plumbing-having kids. And our house is about as close to a farm as you can get around here without running into zoning issues.

So wish us luck. May our noses stay dry and our snot-suckers collect dust.