My poor baby boy has had his very first cold! He has been stuffy. He has been runny. He has been coughing and congested and stuffy and runny all at once! His eyes have itched and watered. His face has been flush. He has been parched about 99% of the day. This has been little Alex’s life for the past four or five days. The thing is, though, that he is such a happy baby, so you can barely tell. He still laughs and smiles and stands and jumps and kicks and plays all day… until last night! Until last night the only sign of ale to him was the rasp behind his giggle, the occasional cough, and the glossy eyes started to give him away… until last night.
We took him to the doctor yesterday, just in case. Just so that we wouldn’t give him the wrong otc medicine, or the wrong dosage, and cause him worse problems. We were trying to be overly cautious. We were looking ahead so as to avoid it getting worse and causing him pain. He has never been sick a day in his life… until last night. The diagnosis was just a small cold, slightly inflamed ears… we were not told that it might be a good idea to NOT give him his nightly bath right before bed because the water might get in his ears and cause him further, and far WORSE pain! Jason told her that he was concerned that Alex might be predisposed to chronic ear infections since he was that way as a very young child. Even though we were told that his ear canals did look inflamed that the only thing to avoid was the bottle right before bed because it could make the congestion a little worse, and that it was just a cold, right? Not to worry about an ear infection. Yeeeaaahh, not so much.
So, at bedtime last night I gave him only a little of his bottle, and my baby’s a big boy so I felt like I was depriving him of his evening meal, my poor baby. And then I followed it with a bottle of water, since he’s so thirsty now, it’ll also help him stay hydrated and get well, and it cleared him out a little to maybe help him breathe with less congestion.
The congestion however, was NOT the problem. He fell fast asleep perfectly fine! He was asleep in seconds. Passie in mouth, music on, good to go. He slept great for about two hours, so it seemed to me that she was being over-cautious and he’d be juuuust fine, because our baby’s a trooper and he’s not going to let a little cold kick his butt.
Yeeeaaah… Two hours later he was ScreaminG!! Out of nowhere, he was screaming like someone hurt him in his sleep. It was the saddest thing and I hoped that holding him and rocking him, or hugging him would help. Not so much. Poor baby was inconsolable and had to be carried, while standing, walking in order to even think of ceasing the screaming.
He was not a colicky baby, so this was a First for us!!
We finally decided that he was having an earache because he wouldn’t stop pulling on his red little lobes. He had had his nightly bath right before bed and, to be sure, had gotten some water in his ears… again, we didn’t think of this until after it was too late.
We held, we rocked, we walked, we sang, we sat in the bathroom with the hot steam going for twenty minutes… as a family… huddled in the bathroom with the door closed. We bulb-sucked out his boogies, which we knew would cause the hysteria to quadruple! He was miserable. He tugged on his ears and cried his poor little eyes out.
We packed him up in the car and headed for the ER at about eleven at night. We weren’t even a mile from the house and he started to relax. I watched him from the seat right next to his as he lulled off to sleep. Finally peaceful. Finally sleeping. Then there was the red light! The crying began again! We were able to hop right on the highway and do a big loop back to the house because we were NOT about to wake him up and let him cry for hours in the ER waiting room. So, we made it home. He stayed asleep. We let him sleep in his carseat, in the floor of our bedroom. Two hours later he woke up again and we moved him to his crib where he slept peacefully in increments of approximately two hours. He’d wake, we’d check on him, rub his back, restart the music and give him his paci. And we all got a total of about four hours sleep… just last night…
So, the moral of my story is… that the age old story of the baby who cries all night and con not be consoled unless he goes for a ride in the car around the block, or around I64, is officially NOT a crock of bull!!! It does happen and it is not fun!
Moral number two is that we will NOT give Alex nightly baths right before bed when he’s got the sniffles, because he probably has allergies and sensitive ears just like his daddy!
My poor boys : o)
This isn't him, but kinda how he looked...
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