My favorite place to have a coughing fit…

Right now, I have a chest cold. It’s one of those yucky ones where your chest hurts and you have a lot of junk in them. You know the kind. This is also the kind of produce a lot of coughing. Hard coughing. Coughing that, well, quite frankly — makes a mother cross her legs.

If you are not a Mom, then you may have no idea why a Mom would cross her legs with that kind of powerful coughing. It may also not make sense to you why my favorite place to have a coughing fit (as I remembered last night) is on the toliet.

Okay, it’s not pretty. But, darn it — it’s the truth. I suppose, there will be some Moms out that that say, “What? That doesn’t happen to me!” Well — then count your blessings, and feel free to walk normally when a huge sneeze is coming on.

But, if you have ever had to stop walking when you are about to sneeze just to make sure that everything is tightly held together, then you know what I am talking about.

I have to admit, when I was first married, and had this picture of what it would be like to have family, I never imagined some loss of bladder control to be part of that picture. That was apparently the silent secret that is not spoken of until you join the club. Perhaps I should have known it was coming when, at 32 weeks pregnant with my first, I was worried that I might be leaking amnoitic fluid.

My doctor said, “Could it just be urine?”

I said, with a smug satisfaction, “I think I would know if I was peeing.”

She laughed, a mother of twins, “Oh, you’d be surprised.”

I can look back at that now and say, “Oh! THAT’S why she said that.”

And, I know it is a hush-hush thing because I only really found out that would happen once it happened. And, not too long ago, a friend of mine (who is the mother of two) somehow slipped into conversation that that happened to her and she looked mortified. That was when I shared, “Ya know, it really happens to a lot of Moms.” She looked so relieved, and I wished she had known sooner, because it looked like it had troubled her for a while.

So…here’s my shout out, in my midst of the cough that won’t go away — kids are a blessing. Pregnancy is a miracle. But, well…you might lose just a bit of your bladder control after carrying around and birthing those blessings. It’s a fact of life. As I said, I’m sure it doesn’t happen to everyone, but just be prepared — when done too hard — coughing, sneezing, vomitting, and even laughter can be dangerous things to do.

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