A Migraine and a 14mth old do not mix.

This first guest post is brought to you by the lovely Megan, who writes at College and a Novel. Make sure you give her some comment love, mmmmkay?

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I am a nanny for a great 14 month old. She is smart and happy and plays a lot, she loves to organize and reorganizes her parent’s pantry and of course she likes to make noise lots and lots of noise. I watch her three to four days a week depending on the week. Last week I only watched her for three but I have to say it was the hardest week ever and only because of Tuesday.

The day started normal and fine. Breakfast she ate, watched her TV, she only watches during breakfast and her DVD that we watch twice a day to teach her to read and help her to speak more, and was playing no problem. Lunch again not a problem except that I could see she was exhausted you know rubbing her eye getting food all over her face and making a general mess, but I knew there was no way she was going to make it through her bath before a nap, yes she takes her bath after lunch and no I don’t know why. So a bath was out until after her nap so I got as much food off of her, took her upstairs and to put her down. Okay so she normally takes a 3 hour nap or at least 2 hour 30 min nap and I depending on the day either do some stuff around the house check things on FB or watch TV and every once in a while when watching TV I will fall asleep.

Today was one of those days except I fell asleep towards the end of her nap and did I mention she teething, add in the construction noise from the house being built next door and my what would have been an hour nap turned into a ten minute nap. Now I get migraines and they are tied to the weather, it happens to be the middle of summer here in Texas and well pollen is out in force. So after a ten minute nap I wake to a screaming baby and I feel dizzy.

At first I just sit there and give her a minute or so to see if she will go back to sleep because I know she had only been asleep for 2 hours and has another hour in her. Well of course she does not and I have to get up. I go get her, change her, and let her play. Knowing that she still needs her bath I go start it by now my head is pounding, it felt like a hammer was hitting my left temple every second and it would intensify every time she screamed which was a lot, and I still felt dizzy and was beginning to get sick to my stomach all signs of a migraine. I gave her a bath in a good five minutes because the water and kneeling did not make anything better it felt like I just put her in and took her even though I went through her whole very intense bath routine, she has dry skin. Out the bath and it was only 4:30 I had been there since 8am and was there until 8pm. We moved downstairs.

She did not get quieter and my head got worse, by dinner time at 6 with two hours to go I was ready to give up and go to sleep, but it’s not my child I can’t lock her in her crib while I sleep, besides all she would do if I did that was scream, I remembered that I had Advil with me and got mad for not remembering earlier, I had looked to see what they had but when it was an uncoated pain killer I knew I couldn’t take that because yes I’m weird and can only take my BC was pill and Advil which is coated I hate taking medicine and then suck at it anyway. Well I took the Advil while she was eating and a half hour later it was better but still not really livable. I spent the rest of my time there walking around to keep myself from passing out in exhaustion and pain.

Finally her mom got home; I went home and went straight to bed. I hate getting migraines and although this was not the worst I’ve had pain wise it was the worst because of where I was. I now try my best to stay awake and keep my Advil close because this was not fun and I DO NOT want to have to do it again.