Sickly First

Over the weekend, I had great plans to FINALLY get caught up on the blog. I still have some posts from my Texas trip that I want to put up as well as more pics from our NH trip last weekend. Unfortunately, two things prevented me from doing that. 1) Our Mac that holds all of our photos is on the fritz. The hard drive is fine but I can't easily get to our pictures with the rest of the machine not working so great. And, more importantly, 2) my poor little baby had another first.....being sick!

Other than a trip to the ER for a possible stomach bug from an overreacting new mother when Dylan was about 3 months old and some minor ear infections that interrupted his sleep, we've had a pretty healthy guy on our hands. On Friday, we went to a party and left Dylan with a new sitter. He was not quite himself when we left but we didn't suspect anything major at that point so we continued with our plans. After we heard about his un Dylan-like behavior from our sitter that night, we started to think something might be up.

Sure enough, Saturday he proved to not be feeling well. He just wanted to be held and to have lots of cat naps. As his fever was fairly high, 102.5, Saturday night I called our pediatrician's nurses line to have a conversation with them. I mean, I have no experience with sick kids and don't know what constitutes concern with fevers and odd behavior. After going through the list of questions, they said to call in on Sunday morning to come in and have him checked if symptoms and fever were still the same.

Of course, this is the one weekend that Mike had plans - taking his nephew to a Lacrosse game Saturday night and coaching soccer Sunday morning. So, I was mostly solo in taking care of the kid. While I obviously wanted to do anything and everything I could to comfort and take care of my sick baby, I had a hard time finding time to get anything done....including the basics for myself like eating and going to the bathroom. He just didn't want to be out of my arms for even a minute.

Sunday morning, his temp was still up so we headed to the doctor. After a quick appointment there, we headed to the lab for a blood draw then had to wait around for results (in case he needed a shot of antibiotics). Waiting around with a sick kid is not ideal. After going for a walk and entertaining him in the car as long as possible, I gave up and headed home. Of course, I was on the entry ramp to the highway when they called and just had to exit right off again since the doctor wanted us up in the office to discuss results. Yeah, that doesn't make a mom nervous at all!

In the end, the conversation wasn't too scary. His white blood cell and platelet counts were low, which means he has a virus. So, the treatment is Tylenol and Motrin to keep his fever down and wait it out. We will have to go back in a couple of weeks just to make sure those counts are up to what they should be.

Last night, we saw our normal Dylan for about an hour so we thought he might be on the mend. This morning, however, he still feels warm, wants to be held and is definitely not himself. It's just really unpleasant to see such a usually happy little guy be so lethargic and sad. So, we'll snuggle him and do whatever we can to get him through his first real sickness. Poor little guy!