Bath Time

 Madeline LOVED baths.

When she was a baby, she'd tried to splash all the water out of her baby tub.

When she was little, she'd be in the big tub playing with her sisters, and then she'd want out, so I'd get her out and wrap her up in a towel, around her head like a hood. She'd snuggle, but after a bit she'd want down and she would then want to literally run around the house, yelling "naked baby, naked baby!" She used "naked baby" to refer to being naked.

Then a good percentage of the time, she'd go back to the tub and want back in. Often, she'd get herself back in, regardless of her wearing a diaper, or sometimes even fully in pajamas. So either I'd have to let her run around naked and risk her peeing on the floor, I'd have to help her take her diaper back off, or I'd just have to shut the bathroom door. She'd get mad.

Even when she started treatment, she still loved baths. I would basically stop bathing the other kids when Madeline was home and restricted to sponge baths following a surgery or something, so she wouldn't get jealous and upset. She wouldn't feel very good, so she often wouldn't want to stay in very long, but she had lost her body confidence, and so wouldn't get out on her own. Admittedly, I would run Epsom salt baths for her to help her body during treatment, and she'd want out, and I would either avoid her or make excuses (I have to wash your sissies first) or even just say "Nope, you need to stay in a little bit longer," to keep her in the 20 minutes the Epsom salt needed to be effective. She'd get mad.

She hated the wipes baths.

I would bathe Eloise using a plastic tub of water and just wetting my washcloth and giving Eloise a sponge bath on a bunch of towels, and Madeline would play with her plastic dishes in Eloise's bath water.

During the stem cell transplant part of treatment, she went through a chemo called thiotepa that had the chance of leeching through her skin and causing burns if it sat there. She couldn't have any stickers, including NG sticker or dressing sticker. Anyone who touched her had to have gloves and anyone who held her needed a gown. And she had to have baths about every four or six hours, even through the night, and every other bath needed to be actual water bath, not just wipes.

Eloise and I were banned, and so the night they started setting up for thiotepa, I waited until the last minute. They had bridled her NG so she didn't need the sticker, and they had made a little burn mesh "tankini" thing to hold the gauze over her port access so they didn't have the dressing sticker on either. And then they asked her if she wanted her first bath in the little toddler tub. I remember right before I went, she was butt naked except the little tankini and she ran to her toy collection and got her little plastic tea pot to play in the water and I just have this image in my head, her standing naked in the doorway of the bathroom, her back to me, patiently, expectantly waiting, plastic dishes clutched in her hands.

Finding her joy even in the trial.