Mommy Withdrawal Syndrome

JJ has been acting up recently. He's been extra naughty, extra whiny and extra difficult to handle. Especially when it's not me handling him most of the time. So much so that he ignited the wrath of The Husband yesterday during homework time and received four strikes in return for his misbehaviour. 😓 #ouch 💔


All I can say to that is that I know my son. And from what I can see and tell, it's Mommy Withdrawal Syndrome – plain and simple. #mommysintuition 🙆‍♀️ I tentatively suggested it to The Husband. But of course, it would be ridiculously pompous of me to just assume so and push my suspicion without basis, rhyme or reason at first glance, riiiiigghhhttttt???

Well, tonight, The Husband finally concured:

Yep, JJ's got Mommy Withdrawal Syndrome.

And he's got it baaaaddddd. So bad that he came up with the lamest excuse to not go over to his cousins' house to play the afternoon away – "they always make me run and sweat and I don't like to get sweaty" 😅 – and instead, just stayed at home to basically do n-o-t-h-i-n-g but chill out and chat with me on the sofa while I rested outside my isolation room. The only semi-fun thing we did was spend 5 minutes drawing tattoos. And even then, it was his idea; not mine. 😕


Can anyone say, "Awww???" I mean, this kid basically gave up a play-crazy afternoon of fun and games with his cousins... in order to spend quality time with boring, ol', tired-out Mommy!! 👩‍👦 How impossibly sweet and sacrificial is that when you're a gila-main, ball-of-energy 5yo, I ask you!? 🙁❤️

Haih. I feel so bad for JJ.

It's so unfortunate that at 5yo, he's had to deal with an absent mom. Especially since he's spent every single day with me and every night snuggling up to me, all his life up till now. And unlike JZ who kinda understands what's going on (I think 🤔) without knowing the specifics of my situation, I kinda feel like JJ is just going with the flow of things and taking each day at a time, innocently trusting us when we say, "It'll all be over soon," or, "Mommy will sleep with you again next week."


I mean, it started off well enough after my first round of chemo. He adjusted to my being the less present parent so very well that it actually took me by surprise. But then I guess the excitement of sleeping over with Ah Ma on a makeshift bed quickly wore off. And when I went back to sleeping in the same room and on the same bed with him on Week 3, he probably thought, "Oh! Mommy's back! Yay! Life goes back to normal now! Hurrah!" 🎉

But, nooOOooOooOoo...

It was short-lived.

Week 3 just flew by and we're now right back at Week 1 again so Mommy's gone back to being the absentee mom AGAIN. 😢💔 Problem is, what he's blissfully unaware of right now is that we'll have to rinse and repeat this nonsense FOUR more times after this. Sigh. Makes me feel like such a crap parent and a lousy mom. This truly is the part of cancer that really blows – the toll it takes on my relationship with the kids. 😔 #cancersucks