Otitis Media + Gastroenteritis = Misery

Nate's had ear infections and a sinus infections, but Dave and I agree that until now, he's never really been sick.

I think he's finally getting better.

It started on Thursday with a fever of 102F at day care. Fever came 2 days into a course of antibiotics for a yicky sinus infection that Dave and I finally got tired of wiping off our own clothes and hands. Back to the pediatrician for shiny new antibiotics for his not-so-shiny new ear infection (his fifth in 6 months and the final clue that myrigotomy tubes are in his future). He started to throw up Thursday night. We first attributed it to choking/gagging on the copious snot in his head, but the diarrhea started Friday morning, blowing away that fantasy. He had a fever of 102F or higher from Thursday afternoon to Saturday evening. Tylenol. Motrin. Tylenol. Motrin. Tylenol. Stopped the Motrin 'cause he wasn't peeing and Dr. Mom wanted to save his kidneys.

I'd be ashamed to write down how little he drank, how little he kept in, how few times he peed, and how much came out of every other opening between Friday and Sunday.

On Friday night we were woken by a pitiful mewling. My sweet baby was laying in a little pool of vomit, clothes wet with diarrhea, and nearly smoking with fever. The thermometer confirmed eminent spontaneous combustion - 104.6F. When I did the conversion to Celsius the next morning (40.3C) I realized I had never taken care of someone with a higher fever. I sat in the rocker tired, sweaty, with a naked, stinky, nearly limp baby on my chest and murmured, like a mantra, the "fever talk" I had given to so many other parents in the Emergency Room. It is less reassuring when the child is your own. The fever dropped to 102F and he dropped into restful sleep right before I dropped into panic.

He kept drinking just enough to stay above my IV fluid threshold but never enough that I felt 100% comfortable.

Last night he seemed a lot better. He had no fever. He drank a whole 6 ounces at once and ate his first solid food in days. He motored around the living room smiling and babbling like normal. Still, his ongoing poops made him a day care pariah.

Today, instead of being at the hospital with a floor full of sick oncology patients, I am at home with a borderline febrile, gagging, pooping, fluid refusing, whining baby with the saddest butt in creation. He cries when he poops and he cries when I clean his butt. He cries 'cause he's thirsty and cries when he swallows things into his roiling stomach. He cries when we wipe his wet Rudolph nose. Being at the hospital would be easier.

Still, I do think he's getting better. His last temperature was normal. His last poop stayed in his diaper. he ate and retained a graham cracker and some yogurt.

The drinking and the peeing?

I still don't want to talk about it.

I WILL persevere and he WILL take some liquid. - One teaspoon at a time.