Being a mother is sometimes unbearable. When you see your child in any kind of pain, you feel so helpless. I wish I could just put my hands over my boy and just attract all the pain out from his body and into my palms and just take it all away. Wouldn't that be nice? I'm sure you can do this if you have special healing powers. I need to work on mine so I'll be better equipped for evenings like the one we had today at home.
Miles had a stomach ache, crying and complaining of the pain. I felt helpless, not knowing really what do to and frantically tried to remember what my mom did for me when I was a kid with belly aches. I think as a kid, what I sought for besides medicine to make it go away-- was comfort from the pain. Comfort was a distraction. Somehow my mom's love and attention remedied everything--even if all she did was put her palm on my belly and say a prayer. Sometimes I thought it was a bit silly how she did things like, touch her thumb to her mouth to dab some saliva on to my stomach and make the sign of the cross. Now that I think of it, that's such a Filipino thing to do--something that was probably a remnant of traditional medicine (the healing properties in saliva?) combined with the Catholic (& colonized) sign of the cross. Well, whatever it was--it made me feel better. Anyway, I almost resorted to rubbing my "laway" (saliva in Tagalog) onto Miles' belly in a desperate effort to relieve his pain! What a nurse I'll make some day. But I stopped myself after a week of trauma in microbiology (learning & fearing all the bacteria we carry-especially the ones in our mouth).
However, I remembered a few different things that my mom did for my tummy aches that made me feel better. She would boil ginger in water like a tea and make me drink it. I was thinking of that idea but wanted to try something that would not make him gag. Grabbed an old empty jar, filled it with hot water, covered it up with a thin towel and used it as a warm compress on his belly. So simple but it works wonders ;) Miles lay down in fetal position with this warm jar resting on his belly for awhile. After about 15 minutes of this, he got up and said he felt better. He unwrapped the jar and pointed to the water and said, "Mommy, look! My stomach ache is gone. It's in the water."
The other day, my brother aka Uncle Ewick as Miles calls him, told me he had this massive boil on his back, believing it was an infected spider bite. I diagnosed it as a staph infection (oh, micro what you do to me!). Anyway, Eric said that our mom saw it on his back and immediately grabbed a piece of garlic, peeled it and started rubbing it on him! He said it stung and I'm sure it did...But see, my mom still does all these home remedies that as a kid, made me think of her as having magical powers. But I was also secretly amused--and I still am. I appreciate growing up with all this knowledge to make me a better equipped holistic mama and nurse. I'm stocking up on garlic and ginger.
