Heartmade Home: Sickie, sickie

This weekend, my boy came down with his first real illness of his life. I count my blessings that he is 13 months old and just now getting sick. Although, after this experience, I'd rather he never got sick at all. I'm sure that's reasonable.

Saturday was Dada and my 6th anniversary, and we had plans to go out on a real date. We left Cohen with his uncle, and about halfway through the movie we were watching, we received a text that his grandmama had taken him home with her. By the time we finished up our date and picked him up, the poor boy was doped up on all kinds of good drugs and feeling fine.

Until about 1 AM. My boy woke up screaming. It wasn't a hurt scream or a scared scream. It was more along the lines of a "Mom! Why aren't you in here with me?!?!" scream. I brought him to bed with me, and we snuggled for about an hour.

I put him back in his crib, and he slept for another hour before he started screaming for me again. All he wanted was to snuggle all night. I'm not going to lie, the snuggling did this mama's heart some good. That's probably the only good thing about having a sick baby, those snuggles.

So needless to say, the boy and I were awake pretty much all night long. By the time 6AM rolled around, dada took over snuggle duty and let me get some sleep.

While I slept, my poor baby got sicker and sicker. By noon, his fever had reached 103 and wasn't dropping and he just didn't look like himself. He refused to eat or drink anything. He just laid in his dada's arms, pretty out of it.

I mean, look at that poor baby.
As a sidenote, dada told me not to share this picture on Facebook for fear that we'd look like horrible parents for taking pictures of our sick baby lying on the floor instead of holding him and comforting him. So, out of respect for his wishes, I did not share this picture on Facebook. I'm sharing it on the blog, instead.

So we decided to take him to an after-hours medical center. The doctor ruled out an ear infection, the flu, and RSV and decided that my baby most likely just has a nasty viral sickie bug. He gave us some prescriptions and an official diagnosis of pharyngitis. Soudns pretty scary, doesn't it? Google it. It's a sore throat. I mean, why can't we just say, "Your kid has a sore throat" instead of throwing out fancy words that scare the jelly out of new parents?

After a bath and a large round of medicine, the boy slept all night. His daddy didn't. You know, waking up to go in the nursery and listen for breathing will keep you up. And it did keep him up, which in turn kept me up. And trust me, I'm not a nice person when I'm running on fumes.

This morning has been better. The fever is holding strong at 101, but that's better than the 103 from yesterday. Cohen's been drinking lots of water (we can't for the life of us get him to drink that Pedialyte stuff, and I don't blame him -- that stuff stinks). He ate a few bites of oatmeal and a handful of Cheerios.

And then he climbed out of my lap to play.

I was so relieved to see him playing that I decided to take care of myself a little and fix breakfast. When I peeked around the corner to check on him, this is what I found: