Yesterday Audrey had her first fever, and it was quite a whopper. She woke up with a temperature, although I didn't bother taking it to see exactly what the numbers were because ....pfft... this is baby #2, and I know what I'm doing, and CLEARLY it's a symptom from the flu shot she had gotten the day before. A very logical line of thinking. Instead of jumping the gun and hauling sick baby across town just to hear some doctor tell me to wait it out, keep her hydrated and give her tylenol, I decided to admit Audrey to the Clinic of Mom. I got this.
We snuggled. We read books. We watched some Bubble Guppies. And then the fever got worse. Again, didn't bother with the thermometer, because a mom just knows. Naptime was a huge struggle because she wanted to be held, but was too hot to deal with her body heat plus mine...so there was a lot of bouncing, walking, pacing, fanning and finally she crashed for a solid two + hours in her crib.
Mom MD assumed that she'd wake up happy and for the most part - over it. She did not. Post-nap baby was still burning up, lethargic and clingy. I resolved to actually chart her temperature and give more tylenol, but my findings were still not all that alarming. First temp was 100.7 underarm. Since underarm readings are the least accurate and I suspected it to be higher, I took her butt temp. 101.5. Ehhhhh. My feeling was that she was under the weather because of the shot, I should give more time for the tylenol to kick in and that it'd all blow over within 24 hours.
No surprise, but she wasn't fond of eating her dinner. Again, fitting with my theory. Around bedtime, things got hairy. She had been spending some time with Daddy and when he brought her to me for an end-of-the-day nursing, she was ON FIRE. 103.8. I think I gave poor Jim an ulcer when I told him it was time to call the nurse line or the pediatrician's answering service. We got a call from a doc who said that she would't have spiked that high of a fever just because of a flu shot and we needed to load her up with more tylenol and motrin. Also, it turns out I had only been giving her half as much tylenol and she should have had. I didn't realize she had bumped up a weight class since the last time I figured out her dosage. My bad. The doc encouraged me to bring her in today because they wanted to be sure there wasn't an infection causing the fever.
So today we had the typical "we can't exactly pinpoint what may be going on" appointment and the conclusion was "wait and see"......yeah. Pretty much my reason for not dragging her into the place where she likley caught whatever she has when all of this started. They want us to pay attention to her diapers because diarrhea most likely means she has a virus. If so, we wait it out because there is nothing you can do to kick a virus anyway. No diarrhea or vomiting plus a persisting high fever means we go back to the doctor to collect a urine sample and test for a UTI. I've been there with baby Madison, and that test is NOT. FUN.
And that brings us to now. Audrey is still cuddly, still a little on the lethargic side, still running a low-grade fever that I am able to control now that I have her tylenol/motrin dosage correct. I will post updates if her illness morphs into anything else...but I'm going to assume that we'll just lay low and let this bug run it's course.
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