It's been a loooong week. Methinks I need an adult beverage. Or five.
C was gone this week for work training, which left me home alone with E. The last time I was home alone with E for an extended period of time was about a month after she was born, and C had to leave for a few days for work training, and I was a complete wreck. Home alone with a new baby, and having terrible baby blues/wacky hormones... not fun. So needless to say, I was not really looking forward to this week, as C would be gone the entire week this time. But at least my days would be broken up with 3 days of work (oh yeah. I got a new job!), and E would be taken care of by Gma & Gpa N those days, with a planned overnight stay for E on Wednesday night - leaving me by myself in the house to relax uninterrupted, watch TV uninterrupted, eat uninterrupted, sleep uninterrupted, work out uninterrupted, go to the bathroom uninterrupted...I was quite excited for Wednesday night.
Until Tuesday night happened.
Tuesday E had been particularly crabby, whiney, and clingy. I thought maybe more teeth were on their way. We went to my parents' house that afternoon to visit with my sister, my niece, and her daughter, who were in town for a basketball game. My mom was holding E and noticed that she felt really hot, and her cheeks were flushed. Someone suggested taking her temperature to see if she was running a fever, which I made my sister do since sticking something up my baby's butt is not high on my list of fun things to do (C had to do it the last time we checked her temperature). It read 104.4. Whoah!!!!
I immediately called her pediatrician's clinic, and talked to the after-hours nurse. She said to put E in a tepid bath for about 15-20 minutes and give her some infant ibuprofen. Not having any infant ibuprofen at my parents' house, I sent my mom to bathe her while I ran to Target. After I got back, my mom had her out of the bath and in her jammies, and I gave her a dose of ibuprofen. I was told to check her temperature an hour after giving her the medication, and if it didn't fall below 104 then we were to head to the ER. So I took E home, and got her settled in at home, and took her temperature an hour later and it was down to 101. She was also perking up quite nicely from the ibuprofen, babbling and screeching like nothing was wrong. I proceeded to try and rock her to sleep, and she zonked right out. This was about 9pm.
At 11pm she woke up crying, and when I went in and picked her up, she was burning up again. So I got her back into a cool bath (Guess what? Babies don't like being put into a cool bath at 11:00 at night. Can't say I blame them.), and then took her temperature, and it was back up to 104. I looked at the dosing info for the ibuprofen, and it said to give a dose every 6-8 hours. It had only been 4 hours since her last dose, so I called the nurse again. She said that while normally they do not suggest this, in her case since her fever was so high to go ahead and give a dose of Tylenol in between the ibuprofen, to help get the fever under control. So I gave a dose of Tylenol, and we snuggled for awhile downstairs until I was too tired to sit up any longer and I took temperature and we went upstairs to our bed. It was back down to 100. We didn't sleep well that night, and I ended up calling into work Wednesday to stay home with E. (Dreams of my solo relaxing Wednesday night were rapidly fading away... *Sigh*)
She actually perked up a bit on Wednesday, and seemed more like herself. Her fever was low-grade during the day, 99-100. I thought for sure she would be better by Thursday, but again she woke up in the middle of the night with a fever of 103. I gave her another dose of ibuprofen, and back into our bed we went. Thursday morning, her fever was back down, and again she was acting perkier. I called her doctor to see if she wanted me to bring E in for a check up. She asked if E had any other symptoms besides the fever, and I said no. No diarrhea, no vomiting, no runny nose, no cough, no congestion, appetite was normal, no rashes...nothing. She said since the fever was down and there were no other symptoms that I could keep her home, but if anything changed I should call.
I stayed home with E again on Thursday, and I took her to the chiropractor for an adjustment, to see if that would help her get better. He was very gentle and sweet with her, but she still cried because there was strange man holding her. She stopped crying the instant I picked her back up, though. Boy, can she turn it on and off :)
She seemed very sleepy the rest of the day, and took a really long nap in the afternoon. She also went to bed early and slept most of the night on Thursday. This morning when she woke up she was her usual happy self, and it seemed that her fever was gone. I got her ready for her bath, and that's when I noticed the rash on her belly and back. My first thought was,
Well, at least that explains the fever! Then I thought,
OMG. Measles?! I immediately called her doctor again, to let her know about the newest symptom. Then I remembered something I had read on Tuesday night when I was Googling fevers in infants. There is a pretty common virus called
Roseola that is one of the main causes of infant fevers. I remembered reading something about a rash that accompanies the virus. I looked it up again, and it sounded exactly like what E had gone through. Right about this time, the doctor's nurse called back, and she said,
Well, there is something called Roseola that is pretty common in infants... I told her that's what I was thinking too, seeing as the description matched exactly what had been going on with E. So aside from getting an actual diagnosis, we're all pretty sure that is what E had. This marks E's first illness, and she handled it like a champ. Much better than Momma :)
C just walked through the door (Yay!!!!), so we're going to go shower him with hugs and kisses and accept tons of praise from him for not burning down the house while he's been away.
