At 1% Battery, This Arab Mama Had to Trust Herself

On motherhood, fear, and trusting yourself when you have absolutely no idea what happens next.

It was Tuesday night in the kitchen, my hands full of dried, chalky antibiotic, and funky hair screaming for a hot bath.  

I cried, left her with her dad, and went to take a shower.

I have failed my child. What did I do wrong? How did we get here?

As tears and shower water ran down my face...

Ten days earlier, Angelina had undergone a tooth extraction. After several days of fever, which we initially thought was caused by a virus, I took her back to the dentist for a follow-up.

Her gums were infected, and she needed antibiotics right away.

There was just one problem!

She refused to take them.

And I mean REFUSED with her whole entire being. 

The first antibiotic smelled like paint thinner and tasted and felt like chalk.

Giving her even one dose felt like we were forcing her to swallow something unbearable, like shoving a yarn ball into her mouth.

I tried everything.

Nutella. Cereal. Chocolate milk. Mixing it into her favorite foods. Turning it into a game.. even tickling her when I was ripping apart on the inside.

And somehow..

She could smell it every single time! I even had to tell her it is your tooth, it smells because it needs help!

She refused, regardless, tooth or no tooth.

And while we were trying to figure this out,

her gums were becoming more swollen, and she was in more pain.

 

Watching my child get worse in front of me, knowing I had medicine that could help her but couldn't get it into her, brought me to my knees.

Like, ugh... this cannot be happening to me.

I was terrified.

The worst thoughts kept visiting me. Where would the infection spread? What would happen if she continued refusing? Would she end up in the hospital?

I could feel my lower body was weakening and my hands were trembling.

And then I lost my patience.

I got angry, walked away, and cried in the shower.

I have failed my child.

When I came back, I didn't try the medicine again.

I hugged her and apologized and cried some more.

She said: it's ok. I cried more.

I told her we'd handle this tomorrow as a team.

She pushed me away, and I kept telling her I loved her.

I had absolutely no idea what we were going to do next.

But I knew I was going to try.

I've been a mother for twelve years. I have three children. I'm educated. I've been through enough to know that I can usually trust my instincts.

Usually, I can anticipate how things will unfold. I can see a timeline, even if it's an uncomfortable one.

But this time, the timeline kept stretching.

One failed attempt became another. One day became three. And every hour without improvement made me question what I am doing with my daughter a little more.

At some point, I remembered something that happened to me when I was a little girl in Tyre, Lebanon.

I was swimming at the beach when I suddenly found myself struggling in the water.

My feet were slipping off the sand beneath me. I was swallowing seawater. There was nobody around me.

I didn't know whether I would make it back. I was terrified. I will never ever forget that moment in my life.

I just kept trying.

And then the sea pushed me forward.

My feet touched the bottom again.

I was safe.

I don't remember having a plan that day. I remember trying to survive without knowing what would happen next.

Decades later, here I was, a mother of three, feeling that same frightening uncertainty.

Except this time, it wasn't my own safety I was afraid for.

It was my child's.

I wasn't trying to fight the sea anymore. I was trying to help a six-year-old girl who was frightened, hurting, and refusing the one thing we needed her to take.

And I had to keep making decisions without knowing how everything would turn out.

I asked the pharmacist to prepare the alternative antibiotic her doctor had prescribed, with bubblegum flavoring this time.

I asked her kindergarten teacher, Sr. Salwa, to encourage her.

I tried a different way of explaining what was happening inside her mouth.

I told Angelina that the bacteria were building little houses in her gums, and we needed to flood those houses with medicine to get rid of them.

I kept trying.

Wednesday afternoon,

One and a half hour later to get the whole dose in.

Drop by

drop.

A little medicine, a sip of water.

Another drop, another sip.

An hour and a half.

I was operating on 1% battery.

I had almost nothing left in me.

Someone suggested that if she continued refusing, she would eventually need to go to the hospital.

I knew that was a possibility. In fact, I had already decided that if I couldn't get her to take the medication, I would pack up and take her to the children's hospital.

I wanted her to receive the care she needed, even if it meant making a harder decision.

But I wanted to give this approach another chance.

I didn't want to put her through more fear, pain, or needles if there was another safe way to help her.

That night, she woke up several times crying in discomfort.

I stayed beside her.

At 2 a.m., she took a shower.

Eventually, she fell asleep and slept through the morning... and I got half an hour in.

This morning, her upper gums were visibly less swollen.

She let me gently brush her teeth.

She nibbled on breakfast, drank some water, got dressed, and was excited about going to school.

Then she looked at me and asked:

"Should we flood the bacteria now and destroy their houses?"

If you know Angelina, you know her favorite topic is: Natural Disasters. So picking the flood definitely worked! 

I could have cried. It was my eureka moment. 

She wanted to take her medicine.

She even reminded me that Sr. Salwa had asked her to take it before coming to school.

I'd almost forgotten that I'd asked her teacher for help the day before.

What had taken an hour and a half yesterday took about ten minutes this morning.

She still didn't like the taste.

But she was trying.

And so was I.

For days, I had felt that I was dealing with the most stubborn child in the world and the scariest thing ever..

 

And I kept telling myself that I would have to be the most stubborn and patient mother in the world for her.

But she wasn't trying to make my life difficult.

She was a child in pain. This was all she knew.

She wasn't refusing because she didn't want to get better. She was frightened by what she had already experienced.

And what she needed from me wasn't another argument about why she had to take her medicine.

She needed patience, reassurance, and a way to understand what we were asking her to do.

I'm still exhausted as I write this.

My eyes hurt. I feel like I've been dragged through days of fear, helplessness, and sleepless nights.

Angelina is doing better, but this experience isn't over yet.

And I keep thinking about what trusting yourself actually means.

Before, I believed I could trust my instincts as a mother because this wasn't my first child. I'm educated, experienced, and generally know what I'm doing.

I still believe in those instincts.

But this time, that belief was tested in ways I hadn't anticipated.

I had to trust myself while terrified.

While exhausted.

While nothing seemed to be working.

While having absolutely no idea what the hell I was going to do next, or whether the next step would be the scariest one yet.

I had to accept that I couldn't guarantee the outcome. I could only keep paying attention, asking for help, making the best decisions I could, and changing course when necessary.

And maybe that's what I recognize in that little girl at Tyre beach.

She didn't know how the sea would carry her.

She didn't know when her feet would touch the sand again.

She just knew she had to keep trying.

That little girl knew nothing about the outcome but just kept trying, just like that Arab mama did.. 

 

And all these years later, I found myself doing the same thing.

Except this time, when I finally felt a little ground beneath my feet, instead of sand, it sounded like my daughter asking:

Mama, should we flood them now?