Love and Shots.

What is love? How do you know when you really love something? Not in the cheesy, Hallmark card, ME + U = 4EVER kind of a way but the earth-shattering, selfless, real way that so many mothers claim is inexplainable?

I'll tell you how you can explain it.

It's when you find a weird, unidentifiable, Grits-looking substance under your daughter's onesie in the morning, and after freaking out because OHMYGOD what is this stuff on my daughter's skin??? and after smelling it and feeling it and still being at a loss for its origin, you STICK OUT YOUR TONGUE and taste it. Just because you're worried. Just because you love that baby so much the thought of not knowing what might be wrong with them inspires you to put a sticky, white substance in your mouth to hopefully identify its content.

True story.

Let me preface this revolting explanation of love with this: On Wednesday, we took Adelyn to get her one-year shots. There were four of them, one in each leg, one in each arm. Adelyn has had several shots before, all in her legs. And they were no fun, awful, bad days in my parenting life. But it was a few seconds of crying and then a cuddly baby, and all was well with the world.

I sort of ride the line between being anti-immunizations and anti-people who think immunizations are the devil. I understand their necessity and their relationship to my daughter's future health. I think people often make too big of a deal about things which we cannot fully understand. I think I trust scientists more than Baby Center. But I also don't trust mandates without elucidation; I also do thorough, borderline-obsessive research on everything related to my daughter. So I'm not all gung-ho, YAY! immunizations, but I'm also not quite ready to forego them and join the health-department-is-out-to-get-us camp.

I'm already a little weary about these shots, though. Let's just say that.

When they put the first shot into Adelyn's arm, it was like nothing I've ever seen before. It was worse than labor. She did not just cry or whine, she FREAKED OUT. She stopped crying and started hyperventilating. She was shaking her little head "no" so ferociously that I felt my heart fall out into my hands and shatter into a million pieces. She was screaming so hard that no noise came out. I had to ask her nurse to stop before she did the next one so that I could pick her up and console her. (It didn't work.)

We got all four done. But let me just say this--if Jason had not been able to leave work early and come with me, I probably would have punched that nurse in the face just on Adelyn's behalf.

Once we got her into the car she was fine, her old self. At home she was happy, playful. There was no sign of any reaction. She went to bed without incident, smiling and babbling in her crib.

But then she woke up in the morning, and as I was making her bottle (Jason was upstairs changing her first diaper), I heard him yelling my name at the top of his lungs.

When I got upstairs, Adelyn was lying, cheerful, on her changing table. What looked like grits was covering her stomach, coming out of her diaper.

The crazy-woman part of me immediately thought it might be some rare reaction to those evil shots. HOW COULD I HAVE DONE THIS TO MY DAUGHTER?

So. Yeah. I tasted whatever it was. In the vain hope that it was just some sort of bread, or food that she had snuck under her onesie before bed, or something. I don't know. I don't have reasonable explanations for my insane-mom reactions.

It took me an hour (an HOUR) after that incident to remember that I had just bought new diapers the day before. Kroger brand. I was trying to be frugal. The diaper had gotten soaked overnight and omitted some sort of disgusting content from its innings out onto her body while she slept.

The things we do for our children.

By the way--it tasted like plastic. Delicious.