Germaphobia

Here is the case; apparently my son has had a case of diarrhea for a couple days now.  Gross right? I am sure you are stopping your reading now as this already seems to be heading down a path that cannot be good. Believe me, coming from the germaphobe that I am, I do not wish to further this imagery, so I will be gentle. 
 I may digress first to give some background on myself; my name is Anne and I am terrified of illness.  My husband comes home with a cold, and I alienate him for at least four days.  If I catch wind that anyone has thrown up in my vicinity, I will promptly hand sanitize every 10-20 minutes and go to bed each and every night knowing that I will wake with the symptoms. One of my biggest fears (yes really) of becoming a parent is dealing with a sick child.  I just know that I will be the one to get puked on, and then all I will be able to focus on will be how many surfaces do I need to sanitize as my poor child lies in a miserable heap.  I shudder to even think of this.  How on earth I survived as a teacher in elementary school is beyond me.  Must have been the 4 plus bottles of sanitizer I had around.

In any case, my baby has finally caught his first cold (from his father...) and I am not a fan of the copious amounts of snot that a tiny head can produce.  I have been surrounded by tissues, nasal aspirators, and hand sanitizer for almost a week now.  Sneezing leads to a whole new adventure in getting his nose clean, while trying not to get any on myself, and keeping him calm enough whilst pretending to not be freaked out by the germs.  Maybe in all this mess I somehow missed the other end. Literally. 
 In my nightmare of rotavirus dreams, I thought that diarrhea diapers would be like strapping on a cloth on a leak of the Hoover Dam. This statement will most definitely come back to haunt me.  This has not (thank GOD) been the case with my son this week so I feel that I am right in missing the signs.  At least I am trying to tell myself that, so I don't feel so negligent.  We have been experimenting with the baby's food this week, not in a crazy way, but just giving him exactly what we were eating for dinner, instead of keeping it bland.   All veteran parents are going...DUH! Well I didn't know. We can say that I was spraying off poopy dipes more often than I have in a while, as I think I thought to myself how it reminded me of his newborn days.  Huh, that should have been my first clue, but I was too focused on the boogers.  Second, I had noticed that one of his diapers, the easy kind, was quite yellow.  That's funny, I thought and went about my hand washing.  My husband changed the next diaper, and noticed the same thing.  Must be the poly-vitamin I thought, makes my pee darker too. That was clue number 2, missed.  Finally when getting him ready for his bath, we both were amazed at the bright redness of a diaper rash staring us in the face.  Now, we use cloth dipes and I don't think I've seen a rash this bad since he was in disposables full time back in December.  After ensuring that the bum was well powdered and that he had had a good drink of water before bed, I was able to do a bit of research.  I am certainly not going to win any mother of the year awards as I found that he had been suffering of a bit of the ol diarrhea, coupled with dehydration, and now a very raw ass.  Nice. Just when my parenting confidence was on the rise, I drop the ball on that one.  I may be a freak about germs, but I don't want to call the Dr. with each and every minute issue that we face. Not to mention that Dr. offices gross me out.  Obviously, I may need to rethink that laid-back method and should transfer some of the OCD of germs to noting changes in my son.  
On a side note to further my nomination as a stellar parent; was enjoying a moment of adult conversation with my husband this evening and noticed that my son was quiet, never a good thing.  He had successfully climbed the first set of stairs in our house and was on the landing with the dog food.  Awesome.