A Sick Child

Well, I knew the healthy streak couldn’t last forever, but this past week my daughter wasn’t feeling well.  We thought she was just teething as she seemed a little fussy and is usually a very happy baby.  She wanted to bite on things, and would occasionally grab at her ear but my wife had read that babies sometimes do that when they’re teething.  But then on Wednesday she woke up with a fever, so I stayed home to take care of her and take her to the doctor. 

The doctor couldn’t say for sure if she was teething or not, but in his opinion the double ear infection and sore throat were the things that were probably bothering her most.  So we filled a prescription for some Amoxicillin, and went on home.   Now, when I saw that we had “bubble gum medicine,” which was a childhood favorite of mine, I was excited.  It didn’t get much better than bubble gum medicine when I was sick.  Well…Abby is not a fan.   I used the little syringe to feed her the medicine, and in about 2 seconds it was clear how she felt about my favorite medicine.  She wasn’t crying the tired tears or hungry tears, but the kind of tears a baby would shed if she was being tortured.  Those were the tears my baby girl shed for me.   You know as a parent that you are only trying to help them, but it was definitely difficult.  Probably the first time in her first six months that I was doing something my daughter hated that I knew I just had to do.   

Luckily the tears didn’t last too long after the medicine was given as I fed her a bottle of milk that washed away the taste of horror that was in her mouth.   To the parents out there who haven’t had to feed their kids medicine, I’d recommend giving them medicine first, and wash it down with other food.  Another tip I would give is to feed your baby medicine with someone else around.  We’ve since had to kind of constrain her every time the medicine is coming.  One person can do the syringe, and another can hold her and keep her from wiggling free of the range of the syringe.  It’s also helpful to have someone to clean-up the medicine that your baby may very well try to spit out. 

I am hopeful that the sicknesses will be few and far between, but more than likely this will be the first of many.  A sick child really is a terrible feeling for a parent, that feeling of helplessness.  For you parent’s out there, any tips on how you’ve dealt with sick children that you could pass along?