Last week, I sucked mucus out of Baby’s nose.

You heard me right. Sucked it right out. No, I did not do this for fun. Anybody out there that knows me knows that I am the most prissy girl EVER and that I am BEYOND squeamish about absolutely everything and that I can be made to vomit by simply hearing the word vomit. Which, yes, makes motherhood a total set-up for me.

But I OVERCAME. My precious girl was spitting up and trying to sneeze at the same time and she got all choke-y and I freaked out because the snot-sucking syringe was’t working and I don’t know CPR in anything other than the most rudimentary, sucked-face-with-the-swimming-dummy-in-Grade-7 kind of way. Then I remembered that our public health nurse had said something about how the Eskimos (PC term here, anyone? Help?) clear their children’s nasal passages by sucking the mucus out, which at the time had provoked my gag reflex and a thought bubble to the effect of “Uh, NO FREAKIN’ WAY EEW EEW EEW!” But Baby was struggling and so I. Just. Did. It. Sucked it up and spit it out. Twice.

And it worked. Super-MEGA- gross, but it worked, and she breathed more easily and smiled and gave me a big wet gassy gurp that was truly one of the most beautiful things that I have ever seen.

That, my friends, is love.

(Snot, BTW, tastes kind of salty.)

Originally posted at Her Bad Mother, 2006. Copyright Catherine Connors 2006 – 2009.