Mother of the Year Moment 2009

Back in June, when I was 6 months pregnant with gigantosaurus-rex, we went on a happy little camping trip as a family. I am no stranger to camping in the woods, but we had never been since having children, so I was a little leary about how it would all go down. Some friends of ours were going with us and they had 3 kids, one of whom was a 7 month old baby- so I figured if they could do it, then so could I!

We brought our trusty old two-room tent and figured that we would put Conner and his playpen in one tent and we would sleep in the other tent on a blow-up mattress. (Side note: when you are pregnant and fat, your body tends to sink very low into the blow-up mattress so that your already aching hips actually touch the floor, leaving you miserable and bruised by morning) The tents could be connected and left with an open passage between them, so I knew that we could at least see/hear him if he needed us.

We had no idea that our sweet, easy-going, non-complaining little toddler would choose to suffer in silence rather than wake us up from our sleep. You see, his fleece, footed pajamas, which keep him perfectly warm where we live in the wintertime, were absolutely worthless up in the frigid mountains. He did have blankets, but at his age at the time, he didn't realize that if he was cold, he could cover himself back up.

When the sun came up, I was laying there awake and miserable from the night of basically sleeping on the hard ground. As the light started to shine through the thin walls of the tent, I saw that my beautiful baby was standing there in his playpen staring at me with desperation. I jumped up and ran over to see if he was ok. His hands were ice cold and his lips were blue. I totally panicked and woke Raf up. It was at this point that Conner totally started to lose it. He was exhausted (I don't think he slept most of the night) and cold and he started to wail. We tried to put him in our bed and snuggle him between us under the covers but he was wigging out and fighting us. We finally just held him down and forced him to lay there until he warmed up when he gave up and fell asleep in our arms. We layed there with him and let him sleep for a few hours until he got so hot that he woke up sweating.

Nice job, mom. Almost killed your own child of hypothermia.

Camping now ranks on my list just below having my annual female exam.