Forever my baby

This week Declan had the stomach flu. I can honestly never remember any of my children having the stomach flu quite like he did. He was doing great Wednesday night, and then about 10:30 it all started. He threw up all night, at least every hour. It wasn't wimpy little throwing up, but house shaking throwing up. I felt so horrible for him. He was so tired, but he could not sleep. I barley slept either. I kept worrying that he wasn't breathing, or some silly thing like that, and kept getting up to check on him. Every time I went in his room he would say "Hi mom. I'm still up, but you need to sleep so go back to bed." Of course I couldn't so I laid there and scratched is head and back, or cleaned up messes, or brought him medicine and water most of the night. He would eventually fall asleep, and my leg would cramp up, so I would head back to bed. About an hour later I would wake up panicked that he was not breathing and hobble back in there to find him awake again. Finally at about 6:00 he fell into a deep sleep and slept until about 11:00. We laid around together all day and just tried to rest and relax. He couldn't keep anything down except ginger-ale, so by the time I put him to bed I was worried about him being dehydrated and starving. Luckily, I was so tired that I slept well that night. When we woke up he was starving! He had a bowl of Chicken Noodle Soup for breakfast, and kept it down. For lunch he ate Chicken Noodle again, so by dinner when he wanted a Chicken sandwich from McDonald's (something I don't usually let him eat), I was more than willing to feed him anything to get him eating again. Rodney was a bit annoyed with how much I worried about him (although he would definitely expect the same amount of worry if her were in Declan's shoes), but I just couldn't help it. I was laughing at therapy about the fact that he is 13 1/2 years old, yet I still feel like he is my baby. I was checking to make sure he was breathing just like you do a newborn. I sat next to him all day for 2 days just to make sure he had everything he needed. I know it is horrible to say, but- Declan, I am afraid you will always be my little boy. You are taller than me, you outweigh me, but I still feel the need to hold you in my arms and make everything better. I don't know if I will ever grow out of those feelings, but I guess for now I will just be grateful that you still feel comforted while in my arms. I am so glad that you are still so willing to be "Mama's Little Boy".