The Nice Lady in the Yoga Pants

Even the dog was worried about Orson

It is easy for me to get self absorbed when the kids are sick. I especially feel like its every mom for herself when I go to the doctor’s office with sick kids, or even for a well check. I am paranoid (absolutely positive really) about every chair arm and touchable surface and person in the doctors office being covered with all sorts of raging contagious nasty’s. The kids get a reminder lecture every time we pull up to our pediatrician’s office. It goes something like this,

“No, you cannot play with the toys. Don’t touch anything. Just sit there and watch the movie they have on the TV. I brought fruit snacks for good listeners, and yes if you have to get a shot we can get an ice cream cone (we get steroid shots frequently so its always on their minds).”

I know that I am not alone in this maternal doctors office waiting room quest in regards to the avoidance of getting even more germs. I also know that most places we go outside our front door are the same or worse in regards to touching germs that can make us sick, but in my mind it just seems heightened at any medical facility (don’t even get me started about how I feel about lab work offices, barf – they are like the DVM of the medical world).

Like all kids and all times parents lecture, sometimes they listen, often they don’t. So I hover and squirt sanitizer frequently, while loudly whispering reminders about not touching this or that surface, and oh yeah threatening with fruit snack denial.

Recently Orson dipped from being his regular normal cheerful self to being a stumbling high fever ridden sleep all morning kind of guy. So I get him and the baby in the car and head over to have him seen by our pediatrician. His fever kept climbing higher all morning and I should have guessed he was going to start puking next. I had to coax him out of the car because he was so out of it, normally I would have carried him but I had the baby on my hip so he had to walk. As he takes his first step into the doctor’s office he starts to yak. I pull him back outside in time for the puke to only get on the doorstep and not all the way into the lobby of the waiting room. I am directing him to puke into the flowers next to the front door and he is stumbling around coughing, crying, and puking all at once. All this is happening while the front door to the doctors office is being held open and all the other doctors office waiters are politely trying not to stare.

The puke (thankfully it wasn’t much because I couldn’t get him to eat all morning) needed to be cleaned up. Orson was huddled in a sobbing ball of boy next to my diaper bag on the sidewalk outside the doctors office. I was holding the baby and had no place to put her as I attempted to clean up the puke and get Orson settled down and into the office.

As my quick thinking skills are working as fast as they can to solve this problem, (I am making a plan to run to the bathroom and grab a wad of paper towels but feeling bad about leaving my kid outside on the street crying while I run to the bathroom and also thinking about how I am not going to get Ruby in the mess), a stranger steps into my brain cloud and shines her light of kindness. She asks if she can hold baby Ruby while I help Orson.

WHAT? Really? You really want to help me? I am not sure if I would be willing to do that for you if the situation was reversed. I would be too worried about getting the “germs” you had brought with you to the doctor’s office. Handing my baby over to a complete stranger not something I would normally do EVER of course, but this solved all of the problems to my plan.

So the kind fellow mother in yoga pants held Ruby who immediately started screaming while I ran as fast as I could to the bathroom for paper towels to clean up Orson and the doorstep as best as I could. After I trashed the towels and washed my hands and after I got settled with the kids on the “sick child” side of the waiting room (the red sea parted for us as we walked through the lobby and to the chairs) I had a chance to observe my rescuer.

She had an infant in a car seat and a toddler with her as well waiting for her turn. I was shocked and so grateful that she helped me. She had in my opinion great reasons to simply watch my scene and silently cheer for me, as I would have done. But instead she stepped into my gross moment of the day and helped me to get through it. I am happy that I did get a chance to sincerely thank her before we left the office. The nice lady in the yoga pants is my new momspiration and a great Christ like example for me to remember.