My baby is sick

My poor Handsome is sick. It's so sad. He has a bad cold. He has been running fevers and refusing to sleep. He will be laughing and playing and then all the sudden have to rub his little eyes. It looks like he is constantly crying with tears constantly falling from his eyes and redness from itchy eyes and all the rubbing. Even when he smiles he can't hide the tired eyes and face that just looks like he is trying so hard to fight the virus but just needs help.

Yesterday morning I called the pediatrician to ask when I should be worried and take him to the doctor, and the nurse said he had to know his temperature before she could tell me anything. I thought when I called back they would say, "We can't do anything for a cold, just keep him on Tylenol and use a humidifier." Well, when I called back and gave his temp of 102F, which I didn't think was too bad, she said to come into the office at 4:15pm. This of course made me panic. Why would it be so incredibly urgent to get him into the office?

So I called work, at this incredibly critical time in the working quarter, and told my boss I needed to take sick leave to take care of my son. I gave Handsome a bath to help control his temperature and for the first time in a few days he was actually laughing and playing in the bathtub and splashing water everywhere.

DH went to work with me for a few hours so that I could attempt to get something done. He held Handsome while I tried to print something out in order to work on it while we were at home. After our two hours at work, we went to Handsome's doctor's appointment.

We got a different doctor than we normally do since this was a last minute appointment. I'm extremely glad that this is not our normal doctor. When he wanted to check Handsome's ears, he had me hold onto Handsome's legs, and then he basically pinned him to the table as Handsome was screaming bloody murder. I wanted to just say stop. The other doctor has me hold Handsome, and then she will check his ears as he holds onto me. He might cry a little, but definitely not as much as he did with this doctor. Anyway, the doctor said he just has a cold, and prescribed Albuterol (sp?) and told us to give him Tylenol and saline drops for his little nose.

Note about Albuterol: it prevents a sick infant from sleeping. Boo. The doctor didn't say this, but all the people that I called did. We gave it to Handsome as soon as we got it, which was around 7pm. I struggled to get Handsome to lay down and sleep as did DH. Neither one of us were successful.

Finally around 2am I gave Handsome a bath. He played while he was in the bathtub and seemed ok except for when he was cough or sneeze or rub his eyes. When it was time to get him out he started shaking. I'm not sure if this was from sickness, medicine, or just being cold. I'm hoping it was from him being cold, but the water was warm and I was holding him in a towel as close to me as he could be. I don't know what it was and it frightened me.

After the bath he slept for about an hour, and then DH was up with him so that I could get a somewhat full two hours of sleep. Finally I couldn't handle the crying, so I got up and fed him. I think he was beyond exhausted at this point because he finally fell asleep. I got two hours of sleep in before he cried again. I fed him again and he went back to sleep again. Three hours later he started crying, but I was too tired to get out of bed, so I was waiting for his crying to get to the point that it would wake me up. At this point his cry was more of a disoriented, annoyed, uncomfortable cry instead of a dire need of a parent cry. Well, he managed to fall back asleep and I did as well.

Then we all slept until noon. So my sleep was from 1-2am, 4-6am, 6:30-9am, 9:30am-noon. DH's sleep was from 4am-noon. That tells me that Handsome finally was able to sleep after the medicine wore off.

Handsome did look better when he woke up. His eyes were still watery, he was still clingy, he still coughed and sneezed and rubbed his eyes, but he didn't look quite so beaten by the virus. I hope today is better for him. I REALLY want him to feel better. I can't stand him being sick and me not being able to make it all better for him.

And now I'm back at work. Remember the crazy schedule I was supposed to have this week? Right, I'm still at work trying to get everything done. I had to take all of yesterday off and then we slept in this morning to try to make up the sleep deficit. Now I have to get as much done today as possible. I REALLY can't be behind on my production.

Dear Lord, please help my family and I get through this weekend.