last night magnificent and i were preparing to go out and i showed the girls the shoes i was going to wear. they were very impressed and made all the right sounds.
sela put her hands in the air and said, "mummy can the girls put the beautiful shoes on?" and i replied in the negative.
"No darling, mummy is putting the shoes on, and then she and daddy are going out."
"ooohhhhh!!!" and her mood went from sunny to sulky. we have been trying to manage sela’s sulkiness in the last few weeks – it is an unattractive habit and she is prone to it right now.
"my tummy hurts!" she declared. "My tummy hurts so much! i am going to vomit and it hurts!"
she dashed into the playroom, swishing the sides of her princess nightie. "my stomach hurts!"
she stalked a few more steps, whinging about the pain in her stomach, and approached gary, who was unobtrusively working on a light fixture in the playroom. "gary! i am going to vomit, i have a pain in my tummy and i can’t try on the shoes!"
gary looked at me and i asked, "sela, do you need to sit on the toilet?"
and she looked at me and walked over to me, and shook her head, at the same time, raising her hand and leaning it against the closet.
and then the vomitting began.
one huge splash.
carys burst into screams and tears.
i kicked off my shoes,
"good girl, sela, you are being very brave!" i encouraged her, just in time for the second wave to ricochet off the closet on to the floor.
i debated if there was time to get her to the bathroom, looked at the volume on the floor/closet and decided it wasn’t worth the potential mess. so i supported instead, pulling back her nightie and pointing down her head for yak #3.
when it was all done, i took her and sobbing carys "my sister won’t stop vomitting!" into the bathroom and i gave sela a drink of water. then i washed her hands and feet. changed her nightie and let her select a new nightie.
"so very proud of you kitten" i told her. and really i was. she hadn’t cried a bit. she had known the vomit was coming, and i was the bad mum who hadn’t believed her. "i am so proud of you sela, most people tend to vomit all over carpets but you didn’t."
i asked her if the vomit feeling was all gone from her tummy and when she assured me it was, i asked her if she wanted a banana. she agreed happily and then i gave her one. we held a brief practise session of what to do if she ever felt the vomit feeling in her tummy again, (permission to scoot out of bed even though we dont get out of bed after bedtime). and then i left.
i felt pretty guilty afterwards though. she had told me she was going to vomit and i thought she was being all dramatic. what a crap mum i can be sometimes!
Reader interactions
8 Replies to “shoes or spews”
if you look at the timing of the incident it looks as though she made herself vomit because she didn’t get her way…
Do you choose to peruse my views re:shoes or spews?
They may be hard to digest at present so I will bring the matter up later.
Love to all….Dad
I am in agreement with jj’s comment… its not that you didn’t believe her…she was showing no signs of sickness prior to not getting her way. However, I do not know Sela and how fast sickness comes upon her wee little body! Sounds though that she was happy to get your attention…..my own little drama queeen likes to do simlar tactics when it comes to not getting her own way! There is little to no chance that you are a crap mom!!! xo lyns
Do not feel any guilt. My daughter does similar things, as far as sulkiness and that vomitting came on suddenly! YIKES! Who could have known??
Hope she feels better and you had a nice evening!
Tess, you had to play the odds. There was a pretty good chance she was pulling at your heart to try the shoes on (who hasn’t played that card at one time or another?). If she had been, and you’d given in – well you know how disastrous that could have been, particularly with her sister watching!
In the meantime, you did manage to console her, and make her proud of how she’d handled the situation, and that sounds like a good mum to me!
Tess, consdiering the timing of the issue ( re:not being able to wear shoes= sore tummy), dont be too hard on yourself. You did the perfect things during the event and adressed the situation at hand. You did everything perfectly 🙂
xo
Haha! The same thing happened to me on Friday. Kate puked in the car a while back, and ever since then she has cried wolf with ‘pukey is coming’. She caught me a few times when I screamed off the highway, pulled over, hauled her out the car seat and held her on the side of the road. After the first few *very* false alarms, I basically ignored her. Every time she said ‘pukey is coming’ I told her to puke in her hat, or a bowl, or whatever was around because I knew she wasn’t for real.
On Friday she told me that ‘pukey is coming’ so I ignored her and two minutes later the pukey really did come. I felt terrible too. I should have known because she did complain about a sore tummy before too.
The problem with these drama queens of ours is that they cry wolf too often!
I did feel very bad too.
Poor Sela. Its v v hard being three yrs and 11m old.
Yes Sela did well but I have to brag here, mine puked INSIDE the toilet bowl the other day. I was pathetically happy.