Moms have a lot of fears when it comes to their children. Some moms fear that their kids will choke while eating, others fear they will drown while swimming or suffocate while napping - I've just always feared a cessation of respiration in general. As a parent, I have a million responsibilites to my children, not the least of which is to ensure that their lungs and nasal passages are functioning at optimum capacity at all times. For this reason, I am not a fan of the common cold, Anna's asthma freaks me out, and the rise and fall of their chests as they lie snug in their beds at the end of the day is included in the nightly checklist, right along with whether or not they've peed and brushed their teeth.
Now that we all know how I feel about breathing, I must share with you what happened last night, simply because there's not much that makes me laugh at 3am, and I don't want to forget this story...
So it's 3am, I am lying in bed wide awake, and I hear one of my kids doing some post-marathon breathing. Despite my fear of labored breathing, I lay completely still and wait...here's why: historically, my ears enjoy playing little tricks on me. I'm always hearing sounds, and my brain is always picking them up and running with them, all the way to the land where mole hills turn into mountains and I convince myself that I and everyone around me is about to die.
So I wait through a few more breaths and then I gently nudge my husband and ask him to join me in the quiet game. He soon confirms that someone or something in the house is breathing very loudly. I go from calm and patient to CPR mode in two seconds flat, and as I'm springing out of the bed to go rescue my child, I fall all over Anna, who unbeknownst to us, has crawled onto the foot of our bed and is sleeping peacefully, the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest indicating that she is sleeping much like a baby and confirming that her mom is a paranoid nut.
