Sick - AGAIN

My poor baby - he's sick again.  It seems unbelievable, really, just how often he's been sick since I went back to work and he started day care.

How can something so cute be so sick???

This time was worse than ever before.  He was sooo sick.  A horrible cough that sounded painful, a nose so stuffy he couldn't breathe when he ate, horrible diarrhea for multiple days, and 48 hours of terrifying vomiting.  And of course a double ear infection.  All of those other times when I thought he was really sick... I had no idea.  He was SO. SICK. this time.

It started about two weeks ago with a annoying but not particularly horrible dry cough.  It would wake him up at night, but he was usually able to fall back asleep on his own.  When DH picked EH up from daycare on the 13th, they mentioned that he had been coughing all day.  Saturday the cough started to get worse, and we noticed that he was getting a stuffy nose.  Sunday the cough got so much worse, he was super fussy, and started running a fever.  This is also when the diarrhea started (oh so fun, let me tell you.)

Monday I already had off of work because day care was closed to an in-service day, and after a long and horrible night full of cough, cry, cough, cry, cough, cough, cough, cry, and a fever of 102.4 I called the pediatrician's office.  Then the fun really began, because it was shortly after this that he started vomiting.  It started with a cough, followed by him unable to catch his breath from all of the coughing.  As he started to turn a weird red/purple color I sat him up and whacked him on the back, trying to get him to breathe.  After an unknown number of terrifying seconds, he exploded with projectile vomit, everywhere.  EVERY. WHERE.  It was awful.  Repeat that episode two other times and that was my morning.

 At the doctors office they confirmed the fever and also confirmed that his ears - both of them - were once again infected  Hello antibiotics! We missed you!!!  (At this point he had only been off of antibiotics from the last ear infection for 11 days.)  He was ultimately diagnosed with the flu and a double ear infection, but of course, there's very little they can do for baby flu, so I was instructed to start the antibiotics, give him smaller feedings supplemented with Pedialyte to help with the dehydration and to give him all of the love and hugs that he needed/wanted.  

I left the doctor's office with the recommendation to not send EH to day care until his fever was gone for at least 24 to 48 hours.  The doctor said that based on similar cases that she's seen this year, the flu viruses have been hanging on for an average of 5 days, instead of the more common 24 hour flu.

Great.  With four more work days still left in the week and neither DH or I particularly able to take off that kind of time right now, I called in the big guns - my mom.

So within two hours I was driving up interstate 79 to pick up my mom somewhere in the middle-of-nowhere interstate 80.  She came down that afternoon and has been watching EH this entire. I don't know what we would have done otherwise - thank goodness for retirement!

It was still a tough week though.  EH's cough has not gotten any better and he still wakes himself multiple times throughout the night coughing and crying.  Last night I was with him for well over an hour, trying to get him to go back to sleep.  DH and I are so deliriously tired that sometimes in the morning we can't even remember what happened the night before and we try to piece it together with our combined hazy memories.  During the day though, we at least knew he was in good hands, with plenty of one-on-one attention and love. 

But "Nana-care" ends tomorrow, as she is returning home.  EH will have to go back to day care on Monday whether he's totally better or not - I just don't think there's any other option.

Everyone keeps telling us how the first year is "the worst," and how them being sick now means that they'll have immune systems of steel in the future. That's all fine and dandy, but it doesn't help with the now.  For our sick little 5 month old and these two parents who catch every disease that he gets AND are totally sleep deprived from life with a sick infant and working full-time, we just want to be healthy.  Is that so much to ask?