In Sickness and in... Sickness

You may have have noticed the labels for posts to the right of this web page, just under my list of links. I like my label word cloud--if you don't know how it works, the label sizes correspond to how many posts have that label, so the label "Amelia" is 164 point font and a label I've only used once, like "labor and delivery," is very small. Until my last post, the label "sickness" had never appeared at all.

Until the end of January Amelia really had not been sick very much; she has certainly had a few colds and I think I have mentioned them on this blog, but never enough to give them a label. However, since the end of January our household has not been the picture of health. First I got a bad cold, and then Amelia got it. She was sniffly, fussy, and slightly feverish for the very very cold snap that we had a couple of weeks ago. Even though by doctor's definition she was better--no fever and not contagious--it seemed to take her forever to really get well. Finally, at the beginning of last week, she was her old self again, happy and bright eyed and runny-nose free.

It lasted two days.

Thursday morning, Amelia and I were leaving for a playdate, and she seemed... off. She was fussy but not about anything in particular. Then, on the way out the door, she laid her head on my shoulder. This is very much unlike Amelia, the anti-nap baby. I considered staying home and putting her to bed, but morning naps haven't been going well around here these days, so I just decided to let her fall asleep in the far if she needed to, so we could try for a longer afternoon nap later. She did fall asleep in the car. An hour or so later, she had a low fever, 99.7.

So we came home. On the way, I called the doctor and made an appointment for that afternoon. Since Amelia had been sick so recently I wanted to her checked out. But during lunch, her fever went away and she was her old self. She ate a huge lunch and happily played for a couple of hours. Not wanting to drag her into a germy doctor's office unnecessarily, I canceled the appointment.

Then she took a nap. When she woke up, she was feverish. The thermometer read 101.5. Twenty minutes later, it was 103.9.

So, holding a hot fussy baby, I called the doctor's office again. They counseled me in basic fever management (for a very high fever, you can alternate Tylenol and ibuprofen every 3 hours) and I made another appointment for the next day. I was very upset at myself for canceling the afternoon appointment. I was also scared because Amelia has never had such a high fever. Nor has she ever wanted to just sit in my arms, doing nothing, not even nursing. My poor baby was very sick.

Thursday night was kind of rough, with Amelia waking every so often with her fever. Friday morning, we headed to the doctor. She quickly determined that Amelia did not have an ear infection, strep, of the flu. So she decided to try to get a urine sample to see if it could be a urinary tract infection.

Getting a urine sample from a baby who's too young to pee in a cup is a little tricky. Basically there is this plastic bag they they taped to Amelia's... area. She was not a huge fan. We sat in the doctor's office and waited for Amelia to pee.

And waited, and waited, and waited.

We read all the books in the examining room, looked at all the diagrams (Amelia was particularly interested in the skeletal system), shared water from a Nalgene, and made up stories about the pictures on the walls. Amelia nursed and then slept. I took her to the bathroom and let her play with running water from the faucet. We went back to the examining room, reread all the books...

Two hours later, still no pee.

So I decided to take her home and bring the sample back later. When we got home, no pee. After lunch...

a very dirty diaper, and a little pee. I'll spare the details, but this was not ideal. The bag was very dirty. I did what I could to collect the urine sample (they gave me a little cup to pour it into) and taped on the second bag, which they had given me in the event that what had just happened happened.

After her nap, we had two more dirty diapers and no more pee. So I took what I had collected into the office and explained what was going on. The nurses consulted with the doctors, and that's when we heard the dreaded two words of the previous post.

And this is not your average 24 hour stomach bug. This is one that can last up to... 10 days. With very high fevers. (Did you notice the shared Nalgene above? I am still dreading that I might get this too. So far so good). Friday night, Amelia's fever spiked up above 104. We got it down quickly with medicine and a lukewarm bath, but it was scary. The same thing happened the next morning, and I was holding her. Her fever went up so fast I didn't realize what was happening.

Now, on Monday, Amelia Valentine is still sick. It's sad to see her feeling so badly and to know there is so little we can do to help. She mostly just wants to be held by me. Every now and then she will perk up and play, but soon after she gets a stomach cramp and starts to whimper, then cry. She has eaten only a few bites of rice and pretzels in the past couple of days. She will drink a little Gatorade and water, but not much else. She scorns the BRAT diet and Pedialyte in any form, including popsicle. The good news is that last night and this morning, we have weaned her off the three hour cycle of medicine without any more fever spikes so far. And, thankfully, she is not weaned from breastfeeding, so she is getting a some liquid and nutrients from that. She is sleeping a lot this morning, and I hope she that soon she will be on the mend. And that the label "sickness" stays very, very small.