The Booger No Man-Burp Can Rival

Look at your pinkie nail.  Imagine something about 1/10 that size.  If you're a guy, maybe 1/12.  So small, right?  Inconsequential really.

But so is a grain of sand.  Tiny.  Until it gets stuck in your eye, and then you're a fair way to being totally debilitated.  And that makes it all the more frustrating.  I mean, really; nothing that small should have such control over a civilized human being.

Especially in the middle of the night.  And ESPECIALLY when it's a booger.  An infant booger the size of 1/10 of your pinkie nail.

My kids tend toward gassiness in their infancy.  The really painful, body-gyrating, spit-up inducing, wails of woe kind of gassiness.  So about a third of of my current feedings with Roxie on any given day are me trying to calm her at the beginning of the feeding when the rush of first milk makes her gulp, getting air, and arch her back in anger that she's hungry but in too much pain to keep going.  So we jostle and pat the back, jostle and pat the back.  But eventually, the air comes up and out.  Then she eats and we repeat the process when she's finished.

Barney from The Simpsons has
got nothin' on Rox.

And I defy any guy competing in some frat-house burp contest to produce a more manly, baritone resonance that lasts as long and with as much volume as that which Roxie's little body can produce.  It's almost...a work of art.  Plus she wins well deserved bragging rights, and we win the proud-parent status.  The burp = winning.

The glorious thing is that most of our middle-of-the-night feedings go burp-free, because Roxie is mostly asleep and so very relaxed.  But the episodes of jostle and pat the back do enter our nocturnal routine often enough.  Till the burp, then sweet relief and then rest.

But there's one thing that I never encountered with Levi or Adelaide, and it's way worse than the gas:  The Booger.  And I blame this very dusty farmhouse and this very dry winter air.  (No, a humidifier doesn't seem to help.)  Almost every morning, and almost on-cue as the clock hits about 5:00 am, I begin to hear the grunting and frustration, the sounds of snot and booger being sucked up and shot back down, up, down, up, down, up, down, rapidly, while Roxie tries to fight it, struggles to breathe, makes it worse, struggles some more, then gets mad and wakes up demanding reprieve. 

So I grab her quickly from the co-sleeper and grasp around for the bulb-syringe-nose-sucker-thingie that is awesome when successful.  I squeeze the bulb, stick it in the nostril I *hope* is the offending nostril, and release the bulb.  I pull it out, and as my sleepy-crazed self is not thinking straight enough to grab a tissue into which to squeeze out anything captured, I just shoot it randomly into the air, or onto my bed somewhere.  Nothing.  Nothing but shrieking wails from my imposed-upon child.  I stick the bulb back in and realize that it's personal with this booger.  I'm tired.  Roxie is loud enough to possibly awaken my other children, and it's close enough to normal waking hours that they might not go back to sleep if awakened.  The peace of our home is at stake.  The sucker goes back in, and there might be a little more aggressive suctioning than is quite recommended for a person of her size.  The sucker comes out, and I'm wildly firing it into the air or down toward my comforter, hoping to see a string of snot and a booger.  Unlike the burps that almost always work themselves up and out, these boogers are elusive.  There are times when I can tilt her wailing head back and peer deep down the nostril and spot the offender.  "I seeeee you, you blasted booger."  There it is, only about a quarter inch from my grasp, if that, stuck.  One booger.  Not even one quarter inch.  5 am.  Yes.



About half the time, I emerge victorious as the booger emerges DEFEATED, shot onto my comforter where I gloat and glare at it and realize my daughter is beside herself in a frenzy and needs some maternal affectations after such a battle.  And about half the time, all the intrusion, poking, sucking, wailing, and forceful infant breathing jostle the booger out of place up in the nostril and open the canal so that it no longer bothers her.  By then, we're all so very awake and startled that sleep seems the last logical conclusion, but we get there.

Saline drops would help if I could remember to buy them.  And one would think that I would, too, given the dramatic episodes, but I somehow manage forgetfulness.

So you see, when presented with the obvious choice of man-burp or tiny, tiny, itty-bitty infant booger, I'll take the man-burp every time.  Because the man-burp makes us winners. 

But The Booger...is Evil.