I Know What Hell is Like

I decided that it would be a great and fun idea to travel with my family out of state for Thanksgiving and help hubby pick up our minivan. In my mind, I thought it would be so fun to have one last hurrah as a family of four. The twins are excellent and expert traveler's so it would just be a grand old time.

Well . . . . . let me highlight a few photos for you that portray their emotions during this trip:

Wednesday afternoon we all headed to the airport. My flight was booked in advance of hubby's and the twins so they were on a different flight because mine was full. We were all packed and ready to go and the twins were thrilled to get to ride the airplane.

Both my flights went smoothly, I had no swelling, it was great. My flight landed an hour before theirs did so my brother and I waited for them. Osh man got off the plane and came running toward me. His eyes were droopy and glassy and his cheeks were bright red and dried out. Shit balls.

We got to my parent's house and he was still warm. I gave him some pedialyte and we all hit the sack. 3 hours later there was vomit everywhere. I mean all over the place! We all got out of bed and cleaned up. I drove to CVS at 3:00 a.m. to get Lysol to spray down the house because I didn't want everyone to get sick. By the time I was home, hubby had puked too.

I went upstairs to sleep with Peanut. We woke up in the morning and let hubby sleep. I was playing with the twins and felt a little icky. Then I puked. And then I puked again. And then I had other fun stuff and felt like someone kicked my ass, so I went to bed and stayed in bed the rest of the day. For my Thanksgiving feast, I ate ramen noodles and Gatorade. Yummo.

Osh man never quite recovered and went back and forth with a fever and occasional puke. We are sickness experts so rolled with the flow. We purchased our van. We tried to do something fun but they felt like crap and were exhausted.

We hit the road to drive back about 15 hours in two days. The first day wasn't bad. Osh man picked up another high fever, but we all slept great and were ready to roll the next day.

This is where the Hell occurred.

We hit the road around 10:00 a.m. Our GPS said we would make it home in about 7 hours and 23 minutes. We planned to stop at the St. Louis Zoo for a little fun so it would be more like 10 hours total including pee stops, zoo trip and dinner stop.

We hit traffic not one, but four times. Two out of the four times it reduced our speed from 75 MPH to 5-10 MPH. The other two times we were at a dead stop, with one of the times we could actually put the car in park and sat there for 20 minutes. Hell.

Osh man was clearly feeling like death. His eyes were droopy again and his face was swollen. He wasn't eating or drinking. We got to a gas station and he said his tummy hurt. I pulled him out of the carseat and he promptly barfed all over. We changed clothes and then got back in the car. Hell.

We stopped for lunch at McDonald's because the kids needed to run around. They actually had a great time and it was cute, although none of us really wanted to eat the food. The bathroom was absolutely disgusting and hubby changed Peanut's poop in my seat and left a poop rag by accident on my seat. Nasty.

We were trucking for awhile and I noticed some pain in my hand. I was swollen like a balloon! My feet were so fat I could hardly get my Sperry's on.We had to stop somewhere so I could walk around and chug water. We found a playground. Osh man was so sick he just got out of the car and laid on the ground. After some walking and water the swelling went back down a bit. I quickly transferred my wedding ring to my pinky finger because I have heard horror stories of them having to be cut off. Hell.

We stopped to eat dinner a bit later. We looked like a pack of homeless people. Osh was now so sick that he could barely keep his eyes open and literally flopped over and passed out at the table. We went to get him some meds. He passed out again after awhile, but he was crying that we "peas" hold him. It made us feel so guilty.

Because I decided it was important to chug water, I had to pee a lot. After a bout of traffic we got to a rest stop. Hubby ran in to pee and I held Osh man for a bit. Peanut asked if this was Grandma's house. I told her no. She said "peas take me home." I told her I wanted to go home and we were going home as fast as we could. She told me that I needed to take her home too and I have to share with her because she NEEDS to go home. I went potty and then we left. I was feeling pretty queasy and noticed a sprite in my door. I opened it and took a big chug. To my surprise it was not Sprite. It was effing BENADRYL. I started motioning for hubby to pull over so he did. I opened the door and spit it everywhere. I had swallowed a little. Benadryl was in my hair and all over. Hell.

Hubby informed me that we needed to go to the airport and get the car that we had left on Wednesday. I was having pretty decent and steady contractions and over all feeling like crap. Luckily Osh was passed out but Peanut was still playing iPad games. I was a little drunk from Benadryl and feeling the burn and pressure down below from an unhappy fetus. After some looking we found the car. I got out and couldn't hold it. I peed everywhere. I'm talking at least three parking spots of pee. Hubby was scared, he said there was no way that was just pee. I was pretty certain it was pee, but to be honest I just wanted to go home so we went home. Hell.

Our trip that should have taken us 7 hours and 23 minutes and maybe 10 hours with fun stops (which we did not do at all) took us roughly 14 hours. Yep, bad idea.

The good news is we are home now. And we aren't doing that again anytime soon. And I lost a few pounds. And having a van is great, the space is awesome! I think I need about a week's worth of bedrest at this point to recover, but other than that, we will survive!