On Wednesday the baby was Grumpy! He was a Grumpy Gus. He wanted to be held and if not held he wanted to be near me. It was a great day for the sling. It kept us both happy, or at least it kept us from crying.
Both the boys had horrible nights on Wednesday night. WHY? We asked. Why, on the night before Ken's Lasik are they boys waking up and screaming so much. Well, we had an idea why J was awake so much- he had eaten a few extra gummy vitamins and he had a tummy ache. But why was Baby B having such a hard time. I spent time with both boys that night. I think I was awake from 1-4 AM. The next day the baby took amazingly long naps, both at home and at Grandma's house where Aunt Abby took care of the boys while I drove Ken to and from his Lasik Eye Surgery. That night as we were feeding the baby I noticed there were flakes around his ear, it looked like liquid had dried there. Upon closer inspection he had an ear full of stuff that didn't look like it should be there. I remembered that he had felt warm to me earlier in the day, and he still felt a little too warm, so I took his temperature. 101.9. I gave him some acetaminophen and put him to bed. The next morning his temp was still above 100 and he still had gunk in his ear and since we were headed to Ken's follow up appointment for his eyes and wouldn't be too far away from the pediatricians office we decided to have B's ear looked at too. Little J had quite a few ear infections and I thought I had gotten really good at reading the signs. J would be clingy- B had been clingy. J would have a fever a few days after getting a runny nose, B had a fever and a stuffy nose. J would wake up screaming what I came to refer to as his "Pain Cry" it was very recognizable to me, B.....I am not sure that the crying I heard on Wednesday night was any different from his normal "Excuse me, I am awake and no one is hear to pick me up Cry".
I was a little late in catching on to what was happening, but I was correct in my suspicions. Baby B had an ear infection, a double ear infection in fact. The good news, the left ear was not as bad as the right. The bad news, his right ear was crusty and full of junk because he had a perforated ear drum. This made me sad. The doctor said not to worry about it too much because "In some reasonably civilized countries piercing the eardrum is the routine treatment for ear infections." He also told me that even if I had brought him in a day or two earlier the eardrum still would have burst, I countered with "That may be, but I would have held him more and tried to comfort him more rather than let him cry it out." Ugh.
So Baby B has been on Antibiotics for 2 days and this is what he looks like now. He is a pretty happy kid, no more Grumpy Gus for us.
Now I have a whole new set of worries. With his first round of antibiotics he has also shown us how different he is from his big brother. As a baby, and even now, J never had problems with medications. As long as you gave it to him slow enough for him to swallow, he took his medicine with the least amount of trouble possible. Baby B seems to have found a new love of vomiting. I have asked him several times over the past few days if he has decided to become bulimic. We started out giving him his medicine the way we always had with J, filing a little medicine dropper with the proper amount and squirting it into the side of his mouth. Nope, Baby B would throw up. I thought maybe it was gaging him so I got out a medicine feeder that used a bottle nipple. That didn't work either, he threw that up too. We called the pediatrician, explained exactly what we were doing and the results we were receiving. No rash, no difficulty breathing, just vomiting. We were told to split up the doses even more, instead of 2 per day, give 3 smaller ones per day, feed him a little, give him the medicine and then finish the feeding. What happened, well it worked the first time, the second time he threw up and then the 3rd and 4th times it worked again. We have started to just mix the medicine with a small amount of his formula- he has figured out that he doesn't like the pink formula. Smart Kid!
Now I have a whole new set of worries. With his first round of antibiotics he has also shown us how different he is from his big brother. As a baby, and even now, J never had problems with medications. As long as you gave it to him slow enough for him to swallow, he took his medicine with the least amount of trouble possible. Baby B seems to have found a new love of vomiting. I have asked him several times over the past few days if he has decided to become bulimic. We started out giving him his medicine the way we always had with J, filing a little medicine dropper with the proper amount and squirting it into the side of his mouth. Nope, Baby B would throw up. I thought maybe it was gaging him so I got out a medicine feeder that used a bottle nipple. That didn't work either, he threw that up too. We called the pediatrician, explained exactly what we were doing and the results we were receiving. No rash, no difficulty breathing, just vomiting. We were told to split up the doses even more, instead of 2 per day, give 3 smaller ones per day, feed him a little, give him the medicine and then finish the feeding. What happened, well it worked the first time, the second time he threw up and then the 3rd and 4th times it worked again. We have started to just mix the medicine with a small amount of his formula- he has figured out that he doesn't like the pink formula. Smart Kid! But he is getting better, I am sure he will give me many more opportunities to recognize his "I'm Sick" signs and maybe some day I will be a professional at tricking him into taking yucky flavored medicine. In the meantime, I will be giving baby B extra cuddles to make up for the ones I should have been giving him last week.
No comments:
Post a Comment