104.8

On Friday, Baby Grady woke up with an awfully big fever for such a little guy. (And yes, I know that in fact it's the opposite and babies can have higher fevers, safely, than adults, but roll with me here. Big fever, little baby. Much sadness)

He'd woken up hot and sad in the middle of the night and I got a temperature of 102.5 and gave him ibuprofen and we rocked and watched some Little Einsteins and then went back to sleep. In the morning, he woke up sad again, and felt hot again, and that's when I got a temperature of 104.8. And that's when I determined I was clearly no longer qualified to handle the situation. So I called up the advice nurse and she said that it was fine and we could just continue to treat him at home. But if it hit 106, we should go to the ER. Which seemed so strange... there was no intermediate "go to the doctor" protocol. When I asked about that, she said that if it were her kid, she'd want to see a doctor with a fever that high. So we did.

And they found nothing, of course. The doctor said that if we didn't start to see other symptoms in a day or so (divulging the reason for the fever), and it didn't go away, she would want to get a urine sample. Have you ever tried to get a nine-month-old to pee in a cup? Me neither, but I'm pretty sure it ends in a catheter. She sent us home with some sample cups, just in case we got the chance to obtain some baby urine. Because that might happen?

By last night my baby was very snurffley, so I think we have our culprit. But the fever persists. We've been alternating ibuprofen and acetaminophen for two days now and hoping this thing breaks soon. He has periods of cheerfulness when the fever's down, but it tends to spike back up before he's due for another dose, so we also have periods of great sadness.

You guys, I really hate it when my baby is sick. After we went to the pediatrician on Friday morning, I went in to work (late) and felt like such a rotten mom. Jasper was home with him, and we couldn't come up with a good reason for me to get behind in work (and miss two important meetings), when Jasper was there. If it had been a daycare day, I certainly would have stayed home. Obviously. But... even though I didn't need to stay home with him, I sure felt like I should. And I also felt like I should go to work. And the shoulds just made me feel lousy all around, because this is me... trying to handle multiple responsibilities and doing nothing well. Jasper was under strict orders to call me to come home if Grady wouldn't take a bottle, or if he just needed mommy. And they were fine, of course, because Jasper is a rock-solid daddy.

But I wasn't there to nurse my sick baby, because I was at work. And he was sick, most likely, because I sent him to daycare while I went to work. And some days I just really have no idea what I'm doing here, because it's clearly all mistakes and badness. And also all about me? I have not failed to notice this.

[This post is part of a conscious decision to talk about the things that are happening even if I can't make them funny. Feel free to let me know if it isn't working out for you.]