poor, sick baby [wiaw]
Monday started out like any other Monday…
I woke up early to get an easy run done on our home treadmill. [Begin rant: I absolutely HATE that my gym doesn’t open until 5 AM on Mondays. It’s 24 hours starting Monday at 5 AM until Friday at 10 PM. Can’t they just make it 24/7 like my old gym. End rant.] I then showered and got ready for work, woke up MacKenna and got her dressed and fed, and made my way to work for the day.
Pre-workout snack: 1/2 banana with peanut butter
Breakfast: strawberry/pineapple green monster smoothie
My Monday was pretty normal. Teach – eat – pump – teach.
Lunch: roasted veggies on quinoa with BBQ sauce + nutritional yeast (grapes on the side)
However, when I went back to my office at the end of the day, I saw that our babysitter had called about an hour earlier. Never a good sign. Her message was not something I wanted to hear:
MacKenna was not taking the bottle very well.
We chalked it up to her just being spoiled by me being home all last week and not giving her a bottle for almost 10 days. While I thought about giving her a bottle while I was off, I wasn’t worried because MacKenna is an extremely easy going baby and will pretty much take anything you put in front of her, especially if she’s really hungry. However, Stacy told me that she had only eaten about 5 ounces all day, a third of what she normally eats at the sitter’s.
I went and picked her up after work, let her breastfeed, and promised to let Matt give her a bottle at the end of the day. We went for a little 2 mile jog in the stroller, but when we came home, I knew something was wrong. Her poor little head was burning up. I took her temperature and it read at 100.4 – anything higher than that is usually considered a fever in infants.
I closely monitored her the rest of the evening, although she wouldn’t let me put her down since she was so tired from having bawled her eyes out all day. Thank goodness for leftovers that were easily heated up in the microwave and could be eaten with one hand.
Dinner: leftover homemade veggie mac + cheese (via Meals and Miles’ recipe) topped with nutritional yeast
I took her temperature again after dinner and saw a number I definitely did not want to see: 101.1. A fever for sure. No wonder my poor little baby wasn’t eating very well. I had a slight freak out, called my mom to ask her what she thought I should do since Matt had parent-teacher conferences, and decided that if she was still running a fever when Matt got home, we would take her to the pediatric afterhours urgent care center across the street.
Of course, she was still running a fever when he got home. We attempted to give her a bottle and had some luck, but she definitely didn’t eat it as well as she normally does. I was going back and forth on whether or not we should take her since I didn’t want to be *that* mom who was totally overreacting for a little cold. But, after seeing how miserable she looked and knowing that the pediatrician had said if she got any worse to take her in, I knew we had to go.
We got there at 8:45 PM, just 15 minutes before they closed for the night. After sitting in the waiting room for 30 minutes, we went back and talked to the nurse about her symptoms and waited another 15 minutes before seeing the nurse practitioner. Her temperature was 100.5 and besides a little heat rash from her fever, everything (ears, nose, throat, lungs, etc.) checked out just fine. They gave her some Tylenol and told us that if her fever persisted until Thursday that we would definitely need to take her back in.
My poor little girl slept just fine Monday night, no signs of fever in the morning, but just an hour into my workday on Tuesday, I got a call from the babysitter saying her temperature was 101.5. So, we spent all yesterday hanging out on the couch, trying to comfort my sick baby.
MacKenna is such a happy baby and seeing her not feeling well breaks my heart. She has cried more in the past 2 days than she has in her 5.5 months alive. I have mad respect for my mommy friends who have dealt with colicky and refluxy babies. I know MacKenna hasn’t cried near as much as those babies and it has still been extremely hard.
She’s been feeling a little better since, but has been extra snuggly, which is just fine by me. I’ve enjoyed having her sleep on my chest all day because I know it makes her feel better. I would take being sick 100 times over if it meant that she could feel better. Let’s hope we can kick this thing so I get my sweet, happy baby back!
Do you have an after hours urgent care where you live? What’s your go-to meal to eat one handed (even if you aren’t a parent – I know there are times when you still have to eat one handed)?
GIVEAWAY WINNERS
Thanks to everyone who entered the Fish Foam giveaway. The winners of a 3-pack of Fish Foam window cleaner are:
Sherry C., Nicole, and Shari!
Winners: Please email me with your mailing address at klvanhorn [at] gmail [dot] com.
Thank you again to Fish Foam for sponsoring this giveaway. If you are in getting some Fish Foam for yourself, you can order the cans through their website.