#95. Sick as a dog
Is this what parenthood is like???
I had never wondered where the phrase “sick as a dog” came from until earlier this week, while throwing our four year-old Bedlington Terrier into the tub at 4am for the third night in a row.
Apparently it dates back to the 1700s, when people thought dogs were responsible for spreading diseases like the plague. Nice.
Our dog (who is named Pig, which is confusing) has been sick for days. I’ll only use this phrase once, taken from The Vaster Wilds or A Court of Thorns and Roses or maybe both (I can’t remember), but the hot liquid shit coming out of her furry body persisted for nearly four days, and our vet didn’t pick up Tuesday morning when we called.
On the third night of horror, after hosing Pig off and wrapping her up in a towel and bringing her back to bed with me, I started to wonder if this is what early parenthood is like.
Pig’s breathing slowed and she gradually fell asleep on my chest, even though I was suddenly wired at 4:30am from catching her just after she did the devil’s work in her crate and tried jumping back up on the bed to cuddle. Usually after a bath she’s nearly feral, but Pig fell asleep on me for nearly an hour, lying completely still. I think it was a combination of feeling like shit and being relieved that she wasn’t being scolded for taking yet another poo in the house.
I laid awake and held her, hyperaware of the damp sleeve of my sweatshirt pushed up to my elbow from when I’d bathed her. That tiny annoyance alone would be enough to keep me awake for an eternity, but I didn’t want to disturb her, or Paul, by getting up to change. Instead, I carefully pried the sleeve down from my elbow and folded it back a few times to find some relief, even though I still couldn’t fall asleep until Pig decided she was done cuddling with me and went to curl into her dad’s side instead.
My own “motherly instincts” this week have surprised me. Previously I’ve let Paul be the one to bathe her, but now I’ve willingly done the dirty work while Paul is the one to put her soiled crate blankets in the washing machine (which is the worse job, in my opinion). I think I’m actually getting a real taste of what having a baby is like for the first ever time in my life, and you know what?
I hate it. But I’m coping better than I thought I would.
On the third night of waking up to the smell of shit at 4am, I told both Pig and Paul that we couldn’t go on like this. Even with the absence of any crying – Pig is a dog who never, ever cries – I was 100% over it only three days in.
On Tuesday evening, I took matters into my own hands and switched her to a chicken and rice diet. As of Thursday morning, she has miraculously recovered. We’ll see if she stays that way.
I think Pig getting so sick has made me 10x more empathetic towards my friends with young children, but it’s also been a lovely affirmation of just one of the many reasons I don’t want to have a baby.
With the conviction of 35 years of living on the earth planet and seeing a lot of shit (pun intended), I can say with certainty that this experience is something I would never willingly sign up for. But people do! Significantly more often than not, they do.
Parents, I don’t know how you do it. You deserve so much more credit than you get for having the nights I’ve recently had and then getting up and going to work at 7am, over and over and over again.
I asked Paul in the middle of the night that exact question. How do parents do it?
Because they don’t have a choice, he said. And he’s right. When Pig is sick, part of having a dog is willingly caring for and cleaning up after her. I accept that. Even if this week has been awful, it doesn’t make me not want to have a dog. I’m sure parents feel the exact same way.
But the more relevant choice comes long before that, when you look at all the different versions of your life and decide which one feels most right.
And I truly just can’t picture my life this way, substituting a little human for a dog, or my life with kids at all, looking at Paul in the middle of the night and asking him: are we having fun yet?
“Did a Best-selling Romantasy Novelist Steal Another Writer’s Story?” by Katy Waldman for The New Yorker
One of my friends from book club dropped this article in the group chat on Wednesday, and I devoured every single word. It’s mostly about the Crave series lawsuit (which is very juicy), but it’s also about the ‘romantasy’ genre in general with some new insights I haven’t read before:
“Despite the genre’s egalitarian spirit, the most prominent romantasy authors are white. A reductive but not entirely spurious industry archetype has emerged, of temperamentally if not politically conservative women, often mothers, who find in their writing a means to success outside a traditional career path.”
“Not all desires need to be met” by Haley Nahman for Maybe Baby
This essay is about envy, and how it’s different from regret. It’s an absolute banger.
“For the past month or so I’ve been mourning more viscerally the person I was before I was a mom, the way I saw the world, the way I socialized or wandered around or spent a free day (free!). I am in a lot of ways the same person I’ve always been but in those specific senses, completely different. My awareness of this is never sharper than in the presence of child-free adults being obviously child-free. Lately I’ve been noticing them everywhere, observing them with a Victorian kind of longing for a life I’ll never have again.”
“The World is Falling Apart. Should I Scrap My Plans to Have Kids?” by Kwame Anthony Appiah for The New York Times Magazine
This “Ethicist” column feels particularly relevant this week with Los Angeles currently battling the worst wildfires in its history. A 33 year-old woman wonders whether she should have children in light of the election results and climate change. The answer is short, but here’s the punchline:
“As the saying goes, the future hasn’t yet been written. The question is how you feel about your progeny playing any role in writing it. If having a child is always a form of hope, not having one because you’re sure what lies ahead can, I fear, be a form of hubris.”
One of my top five reads of 2024, Red Clocks by Leni Zumas, slipped in just two weeks shy of the new year. Red Clocks explores the stories of five different women in one coastal town with very different life experiences, and how they intersect. The story takes place shortly after Roe v. Wade was repealed in the U.S., but imagine the way my mouth dropped open when I flipped to the front of the book and realized this book was written in 2018. Eerie. Chilling. It’s so good and I can’t recommend it enough.
Los Angeles was my home for over a decade. I transformed from a girl into a woman in L.A., touching down just days before my 22nd birthday with an unpaid internship and only a rough sketch of a plan, leaving just before I turned 33 with the career I’d gone there to build. I can’t tell you how heart-wrenching it’s been watching my former home on fire through a tiny glass screen, tucked safely away in Minnesota while I resist the urge to text the friends I left behind every single hour. Please keep L.A. in your thoughts this week. I know I’ve been struggling to think about almost anything else.
If you’re looking for ways to help, consider making a donating to the The California Fire Foundation.
It’s been a tough week. How are you coping with the fires in L.A. and your rage about climate change? How are your pups? If you want to DM me photos of your dogs I wouldn’t be mad.
i went through a similar thing with my dog back in october when we discovered she had chronic pancreatitis. the first two nights were awful, up every hour, cleaning her up, taking her out. then i bought doggy diapers for the times she would fart and unknowingly shit (game changer for my furniture) and i even began to operate by the advice, “sleep when the baby sleeps” lol. when i expected to be awoken every hour it was much easier to stomach (no pun intended)! i’m so glad pig is doing better and i feel for you!!! you can never unsee the hot liquid dookie.
This is so so good Kelly