Tuesday, September 4, 2012

The Snot Runneth O'er

I've been lucky.  So, incredibly lucky, to have a nearly illness-free first child.  Abby never had more than a minor cold, or needed any kind of antibiotics, until she was almost 17 months old.  It was at that point that she caught a little virus and developed some inner-ear inflammation from teething, and ran a mid-grade fever for about three days.

Michael, on the other hand, developed adenitis from a skin infection at about eight weeks old, which led to an ER visit (to get a sonogram) and a round of antibiotics.  Then, at five months, he developed an ear infection, which led to another round.  At six months, he got a strep infection on his hiney, which required yet another.  (Of course, around this time, I read an article that found a link between the use of antibiotics prior to six months and childhood obesity- which made my heart skip a few beats- but what was I to have done differently?  {sigh}).

And, of course, with Michael, we've struggled through the ever-present reflux on top of it all.

But we've never had two sick at once.

Until now, that is.

Michael spent all of last night not sleeping (no joke- Tom and/or I had to tend to him no less than six times between 10:30 and 1:00, and I simply lost count after that), and had developed a runny nose by morning to rival the one that Abby was sporting the day before.

And today has been filled with snot.  Lots and lots of it.  As well as coughing, sneezing, and a generous amount of drool. 

Thankfully, Abby has been mostly in good spirits- just a little more tired, and a little more whiney, than usual.

Michael's been having a harder time of the whole thing.  He's been running a very low-grade fever, though I know from experience that it doesn't take much of a temperature elevation to make you feel pretty cruddy, and has been fighting naps all day long.  I couldn't get him to stay down longer than thirty minutes for any of his naps, though I forced him to get a bit more sleep after he gave up on his second one by bringing him into the bed with me.  He was incredibly restless, however, and never slept deeply.

He's also clearly been having more stomach and intestinal discomfort than usual, the poor little guy.

It took over forty minutes to get him down to sleep tonight, and that bought us just over thirty minutes worth of quiet.  Tom is on the job now, trying to restore Michael to dreamland.  I'm still praying that he gets at least one nice, long, stretch- he really needs it.  So do I, to be honest.  I got practically no sleep at all last night, since it took me nearly as long to fall asleep after each interruption as it took Michael to wake and create a new one.

At least Abby slept soundly.

And she managed a Cute Moment of the Day:

Tom took both of the kids on a Wegmans run this morning, as we were completely out of bananas, and nearly out of formula (and I was practically immobilized from exhaustion).

As he pulled into the checkout lane, the cashier remarked on all of the bottles of formula he had purchased.  She turned to Abby and said, "Wow, you really go through a lot of Similac!"

Abby replied, "It's for Michael!"