Bedbugs and Botulism

A few months ago I had some bad karma revolving around the letter B. Enough time has passed that I am starting to slowly reestablish my relationship with the infamous letter, and I care for bon bons and bubble baths far too much to completely swear off all things beginning with said letter. It's a work in progress. The falling out began with bed bugs. We have all heard news story after skin-crawling news story about the nasty pests popping up across the country. The old adage "don't let the bed bugs bite" suddenly doesn't seem so sweet. Now it's just creepy. Well, on the Saturday of the infamous B's, I was afraid we had some new guests in our bed. It started with a bite ( which also begins with......) on my leg, and a few red spots on my daughter's skin. It ended with a thorough purging of our entire rooms, in which beds were torn apart down to bare boards. No crevice or crack was left unsearched; the dust bunnies under the bed were examined and vacuumed. Short of burning the sheets, I did everything humanly possible to hunt down the little critters. Thankfully nothing turned up. Bye bye bed bugs........enter botulism. O.K., so it didn't really turn out to be botulism either, but our second B fiasco began with a Bountiful Basket and some bad broccoli. Bountiful baskets is a co-op that works with local growers to provide fresh produce to consumers at a very reasonable price. We had purchased several before and had never encountered any problems. We picked up our basket that morning, and everything looked great, except for the browning broccoli. I should have thrown it away right then, but living on a tight budget for years has ingrained in me a habit of never wasting food if it can be used. So, I decided it would be alright if we used it that night. I cut out all of the brown spots and cooked the broccoli. The first bite I took was very bitter, and well, just bad. Unfortunately, by this point, my little Hyrum had already eaten several pieces. Within two hours, the gut-retching began. I literally thought he might throw up an intestine at some point in time. If any of you know my little boy, you know that he is already small enough. There's not much to him to lose. The vomiting continued all night, about every 15 minutes. I wanted to take him to the E.R. Dirk said I was overreacting. He had had food poisoning before, from, hem hem........a bad burger, and assured me this was normal and would pass. So, I tried to calm down, and consulted one of my childcare books, which is where I found the symptoms for botulism. The rest of the night was spent talking to Hyrum every few minutes to make sure he was coherent, and sleeping a little. By morning, he was mostly in the clear. The battle of the B's had come to an end.
Harriet Beecher Stowe said that mothers are instinctive philosophers. I think we have to be. The moment the first tiny cry escapes your baby's lips, your perspective shifts. From then on, everything that happens, from bed bug epidemics to bio-terrorism causes you to ask the question, "How will this affect my child?" And the terrifying thing is, that most of these things will affect them how they are going to affect them no matter what you try to do about them. There is no possible way to protect our children from everything. As the years pass, I know there will be more B's to face, from broken hearts to bullies. But as much as I would like to some days, I know I can't keep my kids in a bubble. And therein lies the constant challenge of parenting: Finding the balance between protecting your children from things that could cause them pain, and letting them experience the world. And hopefully, if we can achieve that balance, our children will grow up firm in the belief that even amidst all of the bad B's, that people are, for the most part, benevolent, and that this life truly is beautiful.