Sunday, August 03, 2008

When your child gets sick.

I'm pretty much at my wits end, and it's only a random Sunday, the 34th year of my life.

Last night my husband and I got to experience the joys of what a colicky baby would be like if we had had one. Luckily for us, Mateo was no where near what a colicky baby is like, from what I've heard and read, although when he was a baby and was crying incessantly over nothing as far was we could tell, I would have argued that one with you.

Now I know better.

Last night was one of the hardest nights by far. Mateo was having some sort of stomach distress, and he would wake up and cry and scream and writhe in pain for what seemed like hours before passing out in exhaustion. At some point I realized it was his belly hurting him, so I began to give him doses of infant gas relief, followed by some serious pats on the back until I got a few burps out of him. It was only then that he would relax and go back to sleep.

This went on every few hours until about 3:30 AM, when he passed out after taking Tylenol and more gas medicine (not only has he been sick since Tuesday night, but a canine tooth is very close to pushing through his gums). I watched Flipping Out until I decided I couldn't stay awake anymore, and when I stood up with him slung over my shoulder like a sack of sadness, he let out 5 consecutive burps, some of which made me fear he was about to puke all over my back, and then I put him down in his crib for another 3 hours of sleep.

Mateo hasn't been much better today. His belly issues seem to be resolved, but his fever is back, he still doesn't want to eat and his breathing isn't the best. He went back to sleep at 7:30 AM, then again at 11 AM but still looks tired. He's going back to the doctor tomorrow.

My husband and I had to play the "who calls in sick to work" game - again, and when he asked me what we should do, I said, "let's play rock paper scissors!" Then I said he needs to stay home because I stayed home Thursday and Friday and in the process made an ass out of myself (which, for guilt reasons, I will not go into in this post or any other). Hopefully we'll get a better answer from his doctor about what's going on with him.

This is just another reminder that when you're a parent, you can't ever get too comfortable. We had a really long stretch of no big illnesses since his bad week in February, and I think I may have cursed our good luck one too many times by mentioning how Mateo's health has been pretty good since that time.

And it's times like these I really wish one of us was a stay at home parent. Just knowing that one of us could stay home with him without having to ruin a day at work would be so nice for the conscious.

1 comment:

Kmommy said...

I feel you there! Luckily I am a stay at home parent.
My boy D was colicky as an infant, and man oh man... it was awful! Love that gas medicine.