Rough Night II: Electric Boogaloo

Is there anything in the world more awful than a puking child?

I say no.

It's like when he was tiny and woke up every hour shrieking, only with an added bonus chance for vomit. I hoisted him up at the wrong time during a coughing fit and got hosed down with a corrosive gruel of breast milk and stomach acid studded with chunks of gnawed grape and decomposing quesadilla.

I've made it this far having absorbed nothing worse than a single stream of urine during an early diaper change at the hospital, so I can't complain too loudly about the physical manifestations.

There's a vast library of stock expressions I never had to bust out before the Fuss arrived. For instance, "heart rending".
That's something that happens to you at 3:30am when your little boy is sitting in your lap crying in between spasms of retching and he wails "No, wait! Wait!" as he feels the next wave building.

What can you even do with that?

The Wife receives some immediate relief when he calls out for 'nigh-nights' afterward, and later she'll write a poem.
My options are more prosaic, patting him on the back in the moment and in the morning carrying him around on my hip and making a one-handed breakfast instead of setting him down to grasp at my pajamas and complain while I scramble the eggs & butter the toast. And I can sit on the couch with him and provide an audience for his running commentary on season two of 'Blue Doggo' instead of tending my internet garden.

"OOoooh, wassat?"
"Notebook!"
"Oooh, NOTEBOOK."

It seems a suitably practical, fatherly response, if lacking in immediate surcease of misery.