Sparrow Lorelei photo gallery

In sickness and in... no, just in sickness.
Tenth month, 9 February - 9 March, 2010

Our biggest learning curves this month were all about dealing with illness. We haven't had to deal with her being sick before, but this month we went through it all. Great learning experiences, which we managed to generally stay patient and awake for. At least, mostly awake. There were times that we were walking and talking but actual consciousness was debatable.

Sparrow got her first real cold this month. She had sniffles last winter but nothing big. This was the full works - snotty blocked nose and all the rest. She and I slept one and a half nights in the beanbag because she really needed to stay upright in order to breathe easily, and she was getting so exhausted from trying to breathe that she couldn't sleep. So here we are, settling down to sleep for the night. I am glad James insisted on getting a good large beanbag - it makes this so much easier. Luckily she was pretty much over it by the time daycare rolled around again. I was glad it didn't last too long - too much beanbag time gives me a sore back, and expressing by hand was getting a little weary. She couldn't drink from the nipple easily with a blocked nose so it was mostly by cup in order to get enough fluid into her. It was a bad enough cold that James and I fully expected to come down with it too, but didn't - it must just be one we've been exposed to recently enough to be OK. Apparently the first few months or more of daycare this is really common as they get everything that's going around from the other kids, and if a child doesn't go to daycare then it happens when they go to kindergarten or school for the first time. So I guess we're getting it over with early. She was cheerful for a lot of it. I think she reacts to being sick like I do - the world is just an amazing place, it kind of glows when I'm sick, and she had that same expression on her face a lot once the worst of it was past.

James pre-arranged a sick day one day, expecting to be knocked over by the cold or if not, then to be wrangling Sparrow because I'd caught it. But she and I were fine and it didn't bother him too much either. So she went to daycare, I spent the morning in the library writing and he got a quiet morning sleeping in and playing computer games. He doesn't get time to himself like that very often and I think it was much appreciated. When we came home Sparrow decided to help him play. She does this to the TV when it's not on, as well - I think she looks at her own reflection in it.

She started up with a fever one night - we thought she was just hot, but the next morning I took her temperature and it was 38.1 (normal is between 36.5 and 37.5). The nurse on the phone told me I hadn't taken her temperature right (I hadn't done it under her arm, because I'm analytical-science-trained and that method is both imprecise and inaccurate, but mums aren't supposed to think like this). She said Sparrow was just a little warm, probably teething. But I know Sparrow well enough to be sure it was a fever even if it was due to teething. So she stayed home from daycare. She drank willingly and thoroughly from her water bottle on the floor there, was a bit lethargic with the heat, tended to just sit and play with one toy for an unusually long period because it was too much like hard work to get another one, and slept a bit more than usual (wanting cuddles all the while). The fan helped keep her temperature down a little, and we gave her some Panadol eventually to lower it a little too. The next morning she still had the fever and we went to the doctor, who said it was a tonsil infection. So the poor mite had to go on antibiotics. I was already on antibiotics because one of my tooth nerves had got infected and died, and we'd thought maybe she was reacting to that in my breast milk. But no, she had her own infection. The antibiotics Were Not Fun. The syringe delivery into the mouth was bad enough. But then she had to take them on an empty stomach and wait at least half an hour before having any food. Given how that timed with her sleeping, it meant I always had to give her the medicine when she was hungry and then refuse her food for what one little baby (and her mother) thought was An Eternity Of The Eleventh Hell even if it was only really thirty minutes. We did not enjoy those days.

And here we are at the emergency room. The story so far: fever started Wednesday night, I was told "teething" Thurs morning, diagnosed as tonsil infection Friday morning, and now it's very late Saturday night. Her fever spiked to the hottest it had been - up to 38.8 - and we couldn't get any Panadol into her to bring it down, she just kept throwing it up. The phone nurse suggested the locum doctor or the emergency room, and the locum doctor - an after-hours service that visits your home - had a really long waiting time as it was a long weekend and Melbourne was being battered by storms. That was the day that there were 5cm hailstones dropping around the city. So we knew she wasn't just hot because of the weather! The emergency room wasn't a much shorter wait, and by the time we got in to be seen her fever had vanished (thankfully the triage nurse had recorded it while it was still up). Sparrow was cheerful and trying to charm all the nurses and play with anything within reach - this being up at 2 am thing with all these new people to look at was really quite a treat. So they figured she wasn't really in any kind of trouble and pretty much sent us home as promptly as they could get us out. The thing they do check carefully for is meningococcal disease, but the doctor said "well she's already on penicillin and meningococcal is sensitive to that". He also explained that the reason you give them paracetamol is so that you can give them paracetamol. I don't know why I didn't think of that -slaps forehead-. We hadn't given her any during the day as she'd had only the lightest of fevers and it was a pretty cold and amazingly wet day (some parts of the city got more than 50mm in 15 minutes!). He said that once they get really hot like that they will throw up the paracetamol, so you give it to them before they get too hot so that you can keep giving it to them. It sounds a bit odd, but I can kindof see the logic. Kindof.

And this is two days later, on the Monday. There's a rash across her chest, down to her hips and under her neck that doesn't show up so well in the photo, and her right eye's puffed up. There's also a spot on her left upper arm, which was an infected spot of some sort and unrelated to everything else. She is cheerfully and with some determination attempting to climb on me and eat the camera while I attempt to photograph the rash. It didn't seem to bother her, unless you tried to touch it. Then she would firmly move your hand away with a "Don't Touch The Tummy" look that you couldn't possibly mistake.

After our late-night excursion Saturday night and not getting to bed until 2:30am, we decided that the next time we'd use the locum because then at least one of us could sleep while we were waiting to be seen. We didn't know that "Next time" would be twentyfour hours later, 10 pm Sunday. Sparrow's temperature plunged and she woke up crying from the cold - she was a degree *below* normal. I held her and let her sleep on me for a little, but she was cranky, every time her sleep was even slightly disturbed she'd start crying. And then I realised she'd come up in a rash. We thought it might be an allergic reaction. The phone nurse said no - not likely to be allergy, suggested getting it checked out and keeping her lightly dressed so as not to overheat - I couldn't get through to her that Sparrow was actually *cold*. So the locum it was. He arrived around half after midnight in the pouring rain, after wandering around a little lost - I went out down the alley waving a torch so he could find us. He was vague about what it actually was but called it a "viral rash". Like measles or roseola. The spots weren't chicken pox or meningococcal or anything else. He saw no signs of bacterial infection in her throat, only the viral infection, and told us that we probably didn't need the antibiotics though it wouldn't hurt her if we kept going. I'm still not sure if I wish he hadn't said that or not. It left me wondering if we'd had the bacterial infection and it had cleared up, or if it was a case of mistaken identity because the infection had been at such an early stage. He was hard to understand, so I wasn't sure I'd got everything he'd said, and I didn't want to stop the antibiotics too soon on principle. But it really was awful giving them to her, and I ended up being a bit non-compliant at the end anyway.

Dressed up in layers of warm clothing. Trying to keep her constantly warm enough across the stormy cold days was so odd after several warm days with the fever constantly trying to keep her cool.

Playing with the WiiFit again. Such a simple thing, always enjoyed. I sometimes use it as a way of distracting both of us from irritating each other, and it was good while we were cooped up at home and not sure if we were contagious. She likes the music, and particularly likes trying to touch the faces of the little characters on the screen. Crawling through my feet while I'm doing one of the foot-controlled games is her latest trick. It does entertainingly random things to the controls that I then have to keep up with. she doesn't know this, of course, I think she just likes playing with my feet when they're moving.

Time for a sleep. Note the insistence on sleeping on her side, sideways in the cot, with the blankets knotted up under her. I thought she was cute. This pose has its drawbacks. She goes to sleep really well and sleeps really well in it. But if she wakes up a little, her body starts crawling without conscious intervention, she bangs her head into the side of the cot, and then wakes up fully while crying. It can take a while to settle her down again because she really has no idea what hit her.

Mummy, what *are* you trying to feed me?

I was really careful about not introducing her to new foods while she was sick, because we wouldn't be able to tell if she was reacting to them given she already had the rash and other signs of illness. Plus the antibiotics would be significantly relandscaping her gut intestinal flora, and we had proof of that in her diarrhoea. So I went back to the simplest foods that she was comfortable with, but because she's so good with eating fruit I did let her try a few different things that were in season. I cut a small slice of the dragonfruit and offered it to her, and showed her the strange-looking food that the slice came from.

The small slice went unheeded - it's dropped there on her table. She dug into the centre with her fingers and jammed chunks of pulp into her mouth, then just tried for the whole thing. I was cleaning the seeds off her, her clothes, the floor and everything else for days. Yes, that's one on her eyebrow.

I had very quiet days while she was sick and recovering - planned as little as possible, especially when we weren't sure that it *wasn't* measles. So I did a bit of housework, and Sparrow helped. She likes the vacuum cleaner - will stand up holding onto it, and crawl around the floor batting at the head as I sweep back and forth. Sometimes the kitten plays this game at the same time.

A parent recovery moment. James and I had lost a lot of sleep and energy while Sparrow was sick. We decided to go out for junk food - went through the drive-thru at Hungry Jacks then parked by the river in the rain and sat quietly listening to music with the three of us cuddling (and Sparrow occasionally discovering the car horn). Lovely recharge, and a lovely way to finish the long weekend (and Sparrow's tenth month). The week before, James had suggested camping or at least planning a day trip for the long weekend. I'd hesitated. In the end between the weather and the illness we were both very glad we'd not planned anything special.