Sick Days...

Not more than a week after I was mentioning that Harbor is going on 11 months and she has not yet been sick, she got some sort of bug.  We went to bed early on Tuesday night since Kevin had been out plowing all night on Monday, and I woke up around 10pm to find Harbor as hot as an oven.  I striped her clothes off and scurried around for a thermometer.  Her temp was somewhere around 103-104 degrees!  Granted, she was sleeping through all this, but I could tell she was uncomfortable – she had been very restless the last few nights, and I now knew why.  I had figured she was having a growth spurt and was also teething… but apparently it turned into something more.

 

So, I grab my book light and start reading through my Dr. Sears Baby Book – they tell me to get some fever reducing meds in her and let her rest… give it a couple days, and if she’s not better, call the doctor.  We, of course, have no baby meds in the house, so I have to send Kevin out to Walgreens at 12 midnight (did I mention, he had no sleep the night before either!).  I gave her some meds, stayed up with her for a few more hours to notice that the fever was going down and finally got some sleep.  I gave her another dose of meds in the morning, then proceeded to read my two additional books on medical care – 1^st being “How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of your Doctor” and the 2^nd being a guide book that was published by our doctors – Partners in Pediatrics.  The first told me to hold off on the meds till she absolutely needed them.  Having a fever means that your body is doing its job fighting off infection… giving the meds can do two things – first, it can interfere with your body doing its job, and second, it can give a child a false sense that they are well – encouraging them to play and act healthy when they should be resting.  The second book was pretty much a combination of the first two.  (I have to say – I love our doctors!).  So… we kept Harbor off the meds all day on Wednesday, and she seemed sick, but ok.  Come night time, she was feeling really bad, so I gave her another dose and took her to bed, thinking that she would be out for the night.  Boy was I wrong – once that medicine kicked in she was feeling great and wanted to play for hours!  She finally went to sleep and woke up about 3am feeling awful and needed another dose of meds.

 

My mom called me while she was up being crazy, and we were trying to go to sleep, and insisted that I call the doctors.  I told her that I’d done my research, I looked for signs of anything out of the unusual, and that I would wait 3 days and call them if she was still not feeling well.  She explained how worried she was about her, but I insisted that it was all ok. 

 

Well – we had a happy end to the story with Harbor waking up on Thursday morning feeling much better… she eased into the day and was back to her old self by the evening.  I’m proud to say that I’m not one of the 90% of moms that freaks out over a fever and immediately calls the doctor!