Sick again... Back to the doctor

So, I spoke too soon in my last blog post when I said that Reagan was feeling much better... She REALLY was just a happy, healthy baby last week after taking antibiotics from her doctor's appointment in Wisconsin and getting over her last infections.  

But, then Reagan caught some 24-hour bug on Wednesday night.  She was sweating in the middle of the night and throwing up the milk that she drank from her bottles.  David and I were up all night and pretty tired when we both needed to go to work Thursday morning.  My school even delayed our starting time to 10:00 AM, but I still felt like I got 3 hours of sleep and woke up at my normal 6:00 AM time.  I guess it was a good morning to have a delayed class time start with a few extra hours in the morning to get a fussy baby ready for Day Care.

  

I dropped Reagan off at Day Care at 9:45 AM, so it was only at 1:30 when David got the phone call from the day care teachers that Reagan was still throwing up all of her milk bottles and sweating again.  Therefore, David stayed at work because he's 30 minutes away and I'm the one with Reagan's carseat in my car, so I ask two generous colleagues to take my last two classes in the afternoon and drove straight to the Day Care, which is conveniently only four miles away from my school. 

Apparently, when an infant become sick at our day care center and is asked to be picked up by her parent, the infant is not allowed to return the next day in order to allow at least 24 hours to pass before she returns (hopefully) healthier.  So, I needed to use one of my four remaining sick days that I saved after using the other 50 sick days that I saved up for my paid maternity leave this fall.  It's a shame that we have such a short paid maternity leave in the USA.  I accumulated those 54 sick days from my five years of working at my school, and now I need to build them all back up again if I want as long of a maternity leave the next time around with Baby #2.  I don't think I can wait that long!  I know... "Peaches, you're whining! Get over it!"  There's nothing I can do... I guess I should feel lucky to get 2 months, atlas for one of my babies, because I know some people who get shorter paid leaves.  Anyway, I have three days to spare for this year before I need to take an unpaid day off from school if Reagan gets sick on a Monday, Thursday or Friday again.  David has Tuesday and Wednesday off from work, so he can take her those days if the timing works out... but hopefully she's healthy for the rest of the year!

After I picked up Reagan from Day Care, we headed to her pediatrician's office for a 2:00 appointment that I scheduled after David told me that Day Care needed us to pick her up ASAP.  The doctor is just down the street from Day Care.  

While we waited for the nurse and doctor to see us, of course we used the time to take some sad, sick selfie pictures in the doctor's room. 

The nurse weighed Reagan in at 16 pounds.  The doctor said that Reagan was growing nicely since her last appointment.  Reagan is now 5 months, 2 weeks. We go back in for Reagan's 6-month appointment on January 29th.

Except for in some of these pictures, Reagan was smiling a lot and she got several compliments from the nurses in the office who said how "smiley and cute" she was.  You wouldn't know she was sweating and vomiting all night!

Ultimately, the doctor said that Reagan caught a new viral infection, separate from the first viral infection and bacterial infection that she had been fighting these past two weeks. The doctor thinks she got it from Day Care.

So, the doctor prescribed some Zofran tablets. 

I asked the doctor if this was the same Zofran that a lot of adults take, too, and he said yes, but that we would break up these tables into 1/4 and 1/2 pieces to give to Reagan.

The doctor also gave us some Pedialyte to give to Reagan for when she throws up the milk that she drinks. He said it would replenish the electrolytes and energy that she's missing from the absence of the milk.  David later told me that some of his friends took Pedialyte because they preferred it over Gatorade to replenish their electrolytes and energy after a hard workout.  That surprised me!

We have yet to give Reagan any of the Zofran tables or the Pedialyte drink because we're only supposed to give it to her when she vomits up the milk again, but she hasn't thrown up again since Thursday morning.  We have only given her two doses of infant Tylenol.  The doctor told us to stop giving the antibiotics from our doctor in Wisconsin to Reagan, but it was nearly gone anyway.

So, I stayed home with Reagan today (Friday) while a substitute teacher covered my classes at school.  I wrote emails from home and worked during Reagan's nap times.  She seemed nearly perfect today, so I think it was just a  24-hour bug that she caught and that she'll get back to her healthy self once again!

Each of these four times that David and I have taken Reagan to the doctor to see why she is not feeling well, we have questioned whether we were being worry warts and overly protective or if we really needed to take her to the doctor each time.  I feel better when we go too often than not enough and regret it.  Just recently, I saw in the news that a 15-month old baby died from the flu in Bristol, Tennessee.  It broke my heart and made me just want to give Reagan an extra hug and really keep a watchful eye on her symptoms and conditions, and finally, it made me feel less like an overprotective parent and more confident in our decisions to take Reagan to the doctor so often in this past month.

Between working on school stuff, doing laundry, taking Hank out when I can, and, of course, changing and feeding Reagan, I would plop her up on my lap as we sat on the couch and watched all the news from today.  We saw more news about the extreme cold weather around the USA (including the tragic 90-vehicle pile-up and fatal accident involving semi-trucks and fireworks and chemicals in the trucks that occurred on I-94 in Kalamazoo, Michigan), President Obama's trip to Knoxville, and, most prominently covered, the violence terrorist attacks in Paris, France.  I just think about all the worried parents here in the USA who have high school and college students studying abroad in Paris right now.  How awful!  I was studying in Paris in 2005-2006 when some of the worst riots occurred (burning cars, schools shut down, metros not running) for several months, and our Middlebury language school sent a note home to families about the unfortunate situation, but that was nothing compared to the absurd violence that has happened this week.  Again, all this on the news just made me want to hug Reagan more and take a look around to feel grateful for what we have here in Tennessee and the good things about our lives right now!  I am just grateful that Reagan is feeling better again... a sick baby breaks your heart but a laughing, almost-rolling over baby just melts it!