The main similarity between this pregnancy and the last one, other than the crushing exhaustion, is that my immune system has once again been shot to the ground. Yes, I'm sick again. This illness doesn't feel familiar at all, though; I can't place my finger on just what, exactly, is wrong with me. My throat aches as though I've sandpapered it, and even though I'm not congested in my head, I can feel drainage down the back of my throat that both makes the pain worse and makes me want to gag all day long. Not only that, but my entire neck is sore, my head hurts, and I ran a wretched fever all day long yesterday.

But at least I can breathe. Thank God for small favors. I'm praying that the favor extends through nobody else in the family contracting this illness. I can only imagine how Sam would react to constant, unignorable pain.

I tried taking a throat drop (which my beloved husband actually ran to the store to get for me), but it seemed to worsen the amount of...goop...sliding down the back of my throat. (I'm shuddering as I recall the sensation; it had me spending large chunks of time in the bathroom last night, positive that I needed to have my head in the vicinity of the toilet.) So far, the most effective solution for me has been to gargle salt water. Of course, Sam finds that just hilarious, which makes me feel irrationally grouchy: "What's so funny, punk? You just wait..."

At least I do feel better today, now that the fever is gone. Maybe I'll get to spend at least one day out of the whole Memorial Day Weekend not feeling as though I could throttle everybody in my path, so long as I could get some undisturbed sleep at the end of it all.

Sam's appointment with the allergist went amazingly well. He withstood the prick test (forty little pin pricks, all over his back) without so much as a whimper except over the fact that I was holding his arms so that he couldn't turn around to see what she was doing. When I asked him later if it had hurt, he said, "Yes...a little bit." His only major complaint was non-verbal; a few minutes after the test was over, I could see that the prick sites were beginning to itch, and his whole body shuddered as he fought the desire to scratch. We had rehearsed this part with his doll in advance, though, pretending to prick her back and then giving her "candy" and instructing her not to scratch her back. He weathered the desire well, asking me to hold him on my lap (belly to belly) and tell him a story.

After twenty minutes passed, the doctor came in and "read" his back. It seems that Sam is allergic to dust and molds. There was also a very, very slight reaction to egg, but the allergist said that he wouldn't be concerned over it at all and, in fact, debated whether or not to even tell me about it. If Sam were his own son, he said, he wouldn't hesitate to feed him eggs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day.

Dust and molds, though, were much more decisive. He recommended allergy covers for our mattresses, box springs, and pillows, and he said that Sam shouldn't be outside while Eric mows the lawn. We're staying with the Singulair, as reaffirmed by the allergist, and since Sam had begun to rub his eyes frequently during the two days prior to the appointment when he wasn't allowed to have his Zyrtec, we'll happily continue taking that as well.

And he still loves the doctor. My crazy child; it doesn't matter what the doctor does to him, he still asks to go back.

Eric and I celebrated our seventh anniversary on Tuesday. Seven years; it's hard to imagine what my life would be like if we had waited until after my graduate school was over to get married, as my parents suggested, or if we'd gotten married a year earlier while we were both still at West Virginia University, as his mom suggested. Little decisions can change so much.

I can't even recall my life very well before Eric. I started dating him when I was still seventeen years old, so perhaps that's not surprising. We got married when I was twenty-one. Thinking about that now, it sounds miraculous that we survived; if a girl just barely out of her teens asked me what I though of getting married so young, I'd tell her she was out of her mind. The only answer I can see as to why we've made it this far is that we've got God at the center of everything. With all the problems and issues we've faced together - serious parental illness, babies, unexpected babies, diagnoses of chronic illnesses, hospital stays, moving, job changes, depressions - I can't think of anything else that would have helped us weather it all and stay sane.

Of course, it's not perfect around here, even now. Especially since the move, things have been more tense than usual in our household, and I'm thinking that counseling wouldn't be a bad idea, even if just to help us make sense of all the changes that have taken place in our lives recently. Help with communication skills is never a bad thing, and doing it while things are okay instead of waiting until they're barely functional seems wise. I vividly recall how strained things were for us after Sam was born; if we can avoid that this time, I'll be...I don't think "relieved" can cover the scope of how I'll feel.

But I'm still very proud of our seven years of marriage. Maybe in another seven, we can consider taking a second honeymoon; after all, I'll probably be done breastfeeding then, I should hope. (Sarcastically says the mother of the child who'll probably nurse until he's ready to get married himself.)