What Magic is This?

You know what words I never like to hear at 3 in the morning?

"Mom, I feel sick."

Why, oh why, do they come and stand by my pillow to tell me this? They don't need my help throwing up, and I will figure out what's going on soon enough. One day their proximity to my pillow wiill turn out very badly, I just know it.

To be fair, and I'm taking a big risk by saying this, it's amazing I don't deal with vomit more often. Aside from a couple of episodes involving severe allergic reactions to food, on the whole my kids seem to  throw up much less than the average kid. Plus, I've trained the older two to either hit the trash can or make it to the bathroom.  So I know it could be much, much worse. (I also know I've just jinxed myself for at least the rest of this winter and possibly for years to come. It's a risk I'm willing to take so that you can learn from my experience.  You're welcome--even though I might resent it later...)

Whenever Sky is sick, we face two dilemmas that I'm guessing most parents don't face. First of all, we are never really sure he's sick. Sometimes Sky throws up for no apparent reason. In fact, when he was in kindergarten, he threw up approximately once every six days for 6 weeks. Despite all of my sleuthing and all of my attempts to add and remove things from his diet, the hurling happened like clockwork. His school has a "24-hour Policy," meaning kids have to stay home from school until they are fever-, vomit-, and diarrhea-free for 24 hours. I'm all for this practice in theory; it's a great way to reduce the spread of germs. But my kid throws up for sport. If I kept him home every time he did, he'd miss a lot of school.  So, whenever he's sick, I have to ascertain whether he's sick or if his stomach just happens to be out of sorts.

Second, once we realize he is sick, we have to assuage the guilt of not noticing his regressive behavior is health related sooner. One thing I can say with certainty about my ASD kid is that when his body starts to go, so does his behavior. Problem is I almost always realize this after the fact. I wish there was a litmus test I could do when he gets out-of-sync to determine whether impending illness is the cause because I always feel guilty later when I finally figure it out. And guilt gets old.

Anyway, none of that stuff really matters. That's not why I'm writing today. I'm writing this post today to tell you something amazing! Maybe you already knew this, but so far, my informal poll of five people indicates that it is not widespread knowledge.

Are you ready for it?

Are you sure?

Okay, here goes...

Salt water stops the pukes.

That's right. Sometime during the second hour of Sky's stomach woes, Ren went down to the kitchen to prepare a bit of warm salt water for him. When I heard him tell Sky to gargle, rinse, and then swallow a little bit of it, I thought he was insane. In fact, I almost peeled myself out of bed to intervene. Lucky for Sky, after five trips to the bathroom with him, I was too tired to move. Because as soon as Sky drank the water, he stopped throwing up. It was instantaneous. His stomach pains and nausea stopped, and he was able to go back to sleep for a couple of hours. And, you know what else? He didn't throw up again.

I'm sure there's a good scientific explanation. But I don't care. All I care about is that it made Sky stop puking because, really, that's all the evidence I need.

I am curious, though, is this common knowledge? Is this a Japanese old wives' remedy? Or, is Ren simply magical?