Our long night...

Last night we were watching a movie and Ava said her tummy hurt. This isn't uncommom with Ava, so my pukaphobia wasn't activated yet.(too much) We put her to bed and everything was ok.
I have to warn those of you with a weak tummy, you may not want to read the rest of this post. For whatever reason, although the idea of puking causes me anxiety, I do not have a weak stomach!
At about 10:00pm, I went to bed. At 10:45, I woke up to Ava whining. I lay there thinking, if I get up quick, maybe I can catch it in the bowl we sent her to bed with and save myself cleaning sheets. I got up, ran to her room, and....

Too late.

I was hit in the face with THE SMELL. Seriously, it was so thick you could have cut it. Poor Ava had puked in her sleep, and was laying there kind of out of it. I am not even sure she knew she had done it. YUCK. I decided I needed help, so I called for Jason. Lately he is insanely hard to wake up. He had falled asleep downstairs, so I started yelling for him. He didn't wake up, but convienently the baby did. I yelled some more, louder now since Corrine was already up. I had him start a bath and asked him to open the window. Of course it was stuck. We live in a new house, isn't that only supposed to happen in older homes? Anyway, the window would NOT open, so we had to work with the thick smell. Jason does just about as well with puke as he does with blood, so I had him go wash the puke bowl. Although Ava did completley miss the INSIDE of the puke bowl, there was puke all over the oustide of it. Oh, well, bonus for trying sweetie. I got Ava in the tub, and went to decide how to clean the sheets. I couldn't leave it any longer; without the ability to open the window I had to do something about the smell. After holding my breath and looking at the situation, I came to the conclusion that I would have to handle this too. The puke had congealed into a thick, slimy puddle and I knew Jason couldn't handle it. (he took one look at the puke in Ava's hair and gagged). I also knew that if I tried to remove the sheets with the puke on it, I would have a bigger mess on my hands.

Into the kitchen I went, where Jason had finished cleaning the puke bowl and was doing anything in the kitchen to appear busy until the puke had been cleaned up, and grabbed a couple of Walmart sacks and a spoon. Yep, you read that right, a spoon. What proceeded was quite possibly the most disgusting thing I have ever done.

I spooned the puke ( now having the consistency of some kind of dip), into the bags, holding my breath (dang window) and breathing when I had to into my shirt. After that was done, the whole mess went into the washer.

Did I mention that this whole time, Corrine was screaming? I had hoped she would go to bed, but she didn't . I didn't want to go in there and touch her until my hands were sanitized, so sorry Corrine!

I bathed Ava, she really needed it, put on clean sheets, and finally got her back to bed and fed Corrine. I was up with Ava puking about 4 or 5 more times through the night, once making another trip in to feed Corrine.

What is so sad about this is my pukaphobia. After the first puking and clean up, I went back to bed, now unable to sleep because my phobia was in complete control. I lay there, worrying about getting sick myself, listening for any sound of the girls getting up downstairs worried they were going to get sick, and praying that the baby didn't get it. I had all these scenerios going in my head. I don't know what my problem is. When it is actually happening, I do fine. Not anxious at all, calm and collected. This is completely anticipatory anxiety. I have tried to figure this out on my own, and can't. Maybe I need to talk to another professional; perhaps they can figure out where my distorted thinking or obsessional thoughts lie. Maybe they can help me reframe my thinking. I mean I really feel ANXIETY about the possibility of puke. I know we all have our quirks, but this bothers me.

On a last note, Ava stopped puking by 4:30 am and is now feeling better!