Never underestimate the power of a mother’s intuition is a saying I have often heard. How we mothers are bonded with our children because they come through us. How we know when they are hurting and need us before they even tell us. How we know they should not do something because we know the outcome will not be good.
Yet there are times when we override that feeling because we don’t want to stymie them. But sometimes we have to trust our instincts and know when no has to be the final answer. Without guilt. Without fear. Without worry.
When that feeling something is not right runs up and down our spine. Last night I experienced that feeling and ignored it. And my daughter and I both paid the consequences for doing so. My daughter had spent the night at a friend’s house over the weekend. She came home with swollen eyes and as the day progressed her nose started to run and so did her eyes. We assumed it was an allergy so we gave her allergy medicine and kept her home for a day to allow her to recuperate.
Yesterday she went back to her camp even though her eyes still did not look right. But made it through the day and seemed to have lots of energy. Last night she and I were at our cousin’s house to celebrate several family member’s birthdays. And she begged me to let her go into the pool because everyone else was going in. I looked at her eyes and knew she was not quite right and everything within me was telling me to keep her out of the pool. But I brushed my apprehensions aside. Not wanting to feel like the party pooper. Not wanting to stop my daughter from having fun swimming with her cousins.
She came out of the pool 15 minutes later and her body broke out instantly in welts. Her eyes swelled up. Her skin colour changed from her normal cappuccino to beet red. She was itchy. My first instinct was to get her in the shower to wash off the chlorine. So I took her into the shower instructing her to wash herself thoroughly with no soap. The welts and redness got worse instead of better. My mind went into overdrive as I was thinking two steps ahead because of how quickly the reaction was spreading and how hot her body felt. Her skin becoming scalier by the minute. And she was panicking.
So I took her to the hospital calling my husband enroute. Telling him not to come but to stay with our son. We spent the next 4 hours in the hospital waiting to be seen. Watching her body go through many changes almost as if she was a chameleon. But as the hours ticked by, she started smiling again and talking a mile a minute so I knew she was going to be okay. By the time we were actually seen by a doctor she looked almost like herself. And she never went into respiratory distress. And I was truly grateful that my daughter came out of that fine. Recognising it could have been ten times worse.
Whispering a silent prayer of gratitude, I knew I was being reminded last night that we always know when something is not right. Had I listened to my instincts in the first place, my daughter would have been spared from the agony she experienced and so would I have been. But the good thing about our experience is that we both learnt something. My daughter to listen to her mother especially when it comes to her wellbeing. And for me to trust my instincts when it comes to my children because there is nothing more primal and instinctual than a mother’s love.
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