I Don't Buy That a Stomach Bug Shows You What Matters

A friend of mine said it again on the phone last week, and she says it every fall as if she just thought of it: when the kids are sick you finally remember what matters. She means it kindly. She's heard it from her mother and read it on a lot of cheerful little graphics, and I've nodded along to it more than once myself. I don't buy it.

A stomach bug mostly shows you what you can drop, and for three days you drop the dishes, the call to your sister, the permission slip, the piano, the dinner with a vegetable in it, the whole idea of a Tuesday. None of that stops mattering. You just can't hold it, because somebody is making the sound from the other room. And when the week is over there's no new wisdom waiting, only a lot of laundry and a longer list than you left.

It's September, so I'm writing this to the mothers whose school started a few weeks ago and who are about to meet norovirus in the hallway at two in the morning. It's already going around. Our doctor's office told me on Monday that they're busy with it, which is what they say every September. Here's what I'd have in the house.

What do you actually need in the house for a stomach bug?

Electrolyte drink comes first and I buy Pedialyte or the store brand, plus the popsicle kind because a two-year-old who won't touch a cup will lick a frozen stick for ten minutes, and that's ten minutes of fluid he's keeping. Plain water isn't enough for a small child who's been losing it from both ends, and full-strength juice and most sports drinks have too much sugar in them to help. The method that works is tedious. A teaspoon or two every five minutes, with a timer on the stove, rather than a big glass that comes straight back up and makes everyone feel worse.

Then the dull food, which is saltines, bananas, rice, applesauce, plain toast, a box of ramen if somebody asks for it at hour thirty. Broth in a mug. I keep one can of ginger ale for the older two because they both swear by it and I've stopped arguing.

The containment is where the real work is, and the lists skip it. A bucket for each bed. Real buckets, a different bright color each, so that at three in the morning you can find the right one by feel and a sleepy child can find it without help. Old bath towels, which are better than any carpet product I've ever bought. A spray bottle of diluted bleach and a box of disposable gloves. Trash bags, more than you think. A roll of paper towels that isn't the last one.

And when the bug has come and gone, the door handles, the light switches, the remote, the fridge handle, the faucets, the phones. Everybody's phone. Somebody's phone was on the bathroom floor at 2 am and then in a pocket, and that's how the bug got to the next person.

If you're short on all of it at 11 pm, an old towel and a mixing bowl will get you to morning. I keep the real list so I can sleep through more of the next one.

When I counted my food storage and it was mostly wheat I was looking at the long shelf. This is the short one, the one you actually reach for, and nobody ever got a saltine out of a bucket of hard red wheat.

The week my mother lost her head and kept her patience

The one example I trust is my mother's, so I'll tell you hers.

It was February of 1989 in St. George and my mother, Diane, had a wedding that Saturday, a hundred and sixty stems of something white and expensive that had come up from the wholesaler in Las Vegas on Tuesday, sitting in buckets of water in the shed behind our house. She ran her flower business out of that shed, and she did not turn down a bride.

My youngest brother Sam was two and got sick first, on Tuesday night. Katie, who was five, was Wednesday. I was Thursday, and I remember it because it was my turn to feel important about it and I felt nothing but a floor. My brother Benjamin was ten and was Friday morning, and Hannah, who was eleven and had been bossing the rest of us about washing our hands all week, got it Saturday and was furious about that for a long time. So it went in order with the youngest first and my father the dentist stripped beds and ran laundry in the evenings and said hardly anything.

My mother never got it. She says she didn't have time.

What I remember is Thursday, me on the couch with a towel and a bucket, and my mother in the kitchen on the phone with the long cord pulled around the corner. She was talking to a woman named Bev who also did flowers, and she was asking Bev to take the Saturday wedding. Not to help with it. To take it. She said she had never done this before, twice, and I had never heard her ask anyone for something and apologize in the same breath.

Bev did the wedding and it went fine, I'm told.

For years afterward she'd bring it up in passing, never angrily, a sentence that began "the year I had to give away the Pruitt wedding" and wandered off somewhere else. She still starts it that way. I've never heard her say whether she thinks she was right.

Where no oxen are, the crib is clean: but much increase is by the strength of the ox.

Proverbs 14:4

The verse is about farm animals, and the crib is a feeding stall. I've never found it comforting in a laundry room, but it does say the clean stall is the empty one.

Does having a sick child really make you a better mother that week?

No, and by every measure I have I'm a worse one that week than the rest of the year. I snap at Caleb about nothing and miss Lily's reading log, and I let Ben watch the same cartoon six times without feeling bad about it until two days later.

Your attention narrows until all of it goes to whoever is in front of you and the others get what's left, which is sometimes just the washing machine heard through the floor. Sick children want very little. Ben, who wants forty things an hour, wants one thing, to be held with his head on the left shoulder, and he doesn't ask for it.

My one practical rule is that I make no decision in a stomach week that I'd mind being held to. No yes to the bake sale and no answer about next month. Near the end, when everyone is tired and nobody's quite well, somebody calls and asks you to bring something to the ward activity. You're allowed to say you'll call back Friday. I've said it and nobody has minded.

This is the best argument I have for counting your dinners before you sign anyone up for fall. You can't plan around the week, and you can only leave room for it without knowing which one it is.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does a stomach bug usually last?

For one person, a day or two is typical and four isn't unusual. In a house it runs longer because it moves, so plan on most of a week with a long tail of being tired. I don't count anyone as done until they've been without a fever for a full day and have kept fluids down.

Should I keep my kid home from school?

Yes, if there's vomiting or a fever, and for a day after it stops. I know what that does to your week and I'd keep them home anyway. The families who send a child back on the same morning are the reason it's going around the third-grade classroom for the second time.

What's the best thing to give a sick child?

An electrolyte drink in small amounts, often. A teaspoon or two every few minutes sounds absurd and works better than anything bigger. If a child can't keep anything down, is very sleepy, hasn't had a wet diaper or hasn't used the bathroom in many hours, call your doctor. Don't wait to see if it passes by morning.

Is it normal for the whole family to get it?

Common, yes. It spreads on hands and shared things, and a household can't really stay clear of it. Mothers sometimes escape. Mine did and I can't tell you why.

How do I clean up after it?

Wash the soft things hot, wipe the hard things you touch, and use a bleach cleaner on the doorknobs and the handles. If it's on the carpet, put down an old towel and lift what you can, then wash the towel. Don't forget the phones.

What I still don't like

The cleanup takes longer than the sickness, and I resent that every time. It always shows up in a week I'd stacked, and the buckets go back on the garage shelf until I forget I own them. Most of all I can't stand the little graphic that says it all works out for the best.

It mostly just ends, and then there's the laundry.

with love, Melissa