Sick Baby

Sailor was sick once before.  She had a slight fever, but nothing that really kept her from her usual toy-playing and mild havoc-wreaking.  This weekend, however, was another story.

She was at my parent's house on Thursday night and woke up Friday with a pretty runny nose, but that was about it.  She woke up an hour after going to bed on Friday night and was soothed with some Infant's Advil, some water and some rocking.  At 3am she woke up again.  This time she was fairly warm.  Our ear thermometer said her temperature was around 98, but I wasn't so sure I should buy what it was selling.  I remembered the last time she had a fever and how the thermometer seemed wrong.  When I looked back at reviews, EVERYONE said how much it sucked!  How could I not have seen that when I put it on my registry?!  I checked out reviews for EVERYTHING on that list!  Extensively!

But, she wasn't too hot so I gave her some more medicine and put her back to bed.

Saturday she spent a total of about 30 minutes playing/walking around.  The rest of the time she was either napping or in my lap watching TV.  For those of you with a one-year old, THIS IS NOT NORMAL.  Even for those of you with CHILL babies.  I have what we have determined is an "active" baby, who won't sit on your lap for more than about 15 minutes at a time - and that's if she's tired and you're particularly lucky.

In the afternoon, she was getting fussy so we decided to try a tub.  In the process of creating naked baby, I thought it might be a good idea to try a rectal thermometer, since I was pretty sure our ear one SUCKED BALLS.  It was on the rise when she started peeing, which, although the thermometer is obviously INSIDE, I was still worried the pee might affect the temperature.  I stopped when it reached 102.7.

We tried and bath and that was apparently the worst possible thing we could have done.

We immediately dressed her and put her in the car, heading to the walk-in clinic.

We live about 3 minutes from a Vanderbilt Walk-In Clinic, which is AWESOME because they are AMAZING.  They have Vanderbilt doctors running the clinic and not just walk-in clinicians.  They have a ton of equipment on site.  It's highly reviewed and great.

We got right in.  They took her temperature and it was 103.5.  A little scary for a first time mom.  (The doctor even asked me if this was our first child.  Why do doctors keep asking me that?  Do I make it SO obvious? Jesus.)

Nothing wrong with her ears.  Nothing wrong with her throat - just slight redness.  Perhaps from the massive, body-shaking crying she'd been doing for the last hour.  Nothing to worry about in her lungs.  Just a little upper-respiratory congestion.  BUT, she said she didn't want to rule out Pneumonia and said they were going to do some x-rays.

Have you had to hold your screaming, sick child down for a series of x-rays before?  All the while letting the fact that they're doing X-RAYS freak you out to the upteenth degree even though there's currently nothing to be too paranoid about?

I can't imagine having a child who's sick a lot.  Or a child who is terminally ill.  My heart goes out to all of you mom's who have to do that.  It went out to you before, but now even more so.

There was nothing worrisome in the x-rays.  The doctor said it was probably a virus and that we could alternate Advil/Motrin with Tylenol every 3-4 hours.  Did you know that?  I didn't know that.  THAT little tid bit will come in handy in the future, I'm sure.

So she's just fine now. 

But, standing there in the x-ray room I had the most horrible things running through my mind.  I thought about children (including a family friend's daughter) who have the littlest symptoms - a headache, a fever - and within 48 hours they're dead.  Isn't that awful?  Oh, God, when you think that something like that could be happening to you - even if you're sure the thought is irrational and you need to calm down - it's scary.  And a screaming, burning up child on an x-ray table does nothing to appease your fears.

Although, I'm sure if I have a second child and she gets a fever, I'll just pump her full of Tylenol and Advil and not even worry!