Friday 13 July 2012

Gurgle

Yesterday Joseph was very ill.
He's nineteen months old and apart from a couple of light colds he's never really been ill before. No, not ever. No fevers, no big vomits and no A&E trips. When he was milk fed he probably threw up about five times in total and now he's fully weaned he's never been sick. We've had a little bit of "posseting", a little bit of food coming back, mostly in his sleep and even that has only happened a few times.
I had spent the day at work yesterday feeling increasing groggy and uncomfortable. My whole body was aching, I was tired but strangely buzzing and I felt cold. Anyone who knows me knows I don't feel the cold, hardly at all. If I'm really feeling cold then I know something is probably wrong. Still, I was staying upright and managing to keep going so it couldn't have been that bad.
So I thought.
When I went to pick Joseph up, he looked pale and unwell. My Mum said that he'd been fine till about lunch time where he hadn't wanted to eat and had produced a couple of nasty nappies. He'd slept well but just didn't seem his usual self, he was a little lethargic and a touch grumpy. I thought he felt a little warm, so I got him home.
He didn't want his tea. On Thursdays he always has toast and tinned spaghetti. I know it's not the healthiest of meals but it's only once a week and I need to give him something quick with minimum effort. He didn't want it, he only ate a few mouthfuls of toast and didn't want any spaghetti. Usually he loves it, but not this time.
Andy dug out our baby thermometer, a funny shaped dummy that takes a reading in the mouth just as long as you can persuade him to keep it in long enough. I had to sit cuddling him while he watched Chuggington and we eventually got a reading.
38.9 degrees centigrade.
I knew this was high, 38 degrees is considered a fever temperature in adults. After a lot of faffing about on the Bounty website (why do they make it so confusing to navigate?) we were informed that 37.5 degrees is a fever in a small child and above 38.5 could be potentially serious.
We stripped him down to his nappy and broke out the Calpol, that magical pink liquid that seems to be made from fairy dust, children's wishes and paracetamol. I conclude this to be the case due to its miraculous effects on small children and its inability to help adults at all. Fairy dust doesn't work on adults, you see.
Joseph was sometimes distressed and a little more subdued than his usual self, but appeared to not really be bothered by his high body temperature. I took my own and it was 38.1. I felt like something squashed and scraped off the road, he seemed all right. Must be the Calpol.
I took him upstairs and tried to encourage him to rest with me on our bed. He rested for about three seconds and then started bouncing about and giggling. Nothing I could do would calm him down, he just wanted to play. In the end I gave up, put him in his cot and slunk back downstairs to try and crash on the sofa for a bit. He went to sleep, I did not.
He woke up about twenty minutes later. I've never put him down in just a nappy, he usually has at least a sleeping bag between him and the sheet. I've never risked it since I put him down for his nap on a hot day in just his t-shirt and he pulled his nappy off and threw it over the side of the cot.
He was unhappy because he was sweaty. The sweat had puddled beneath him and collected, due to the fact that his mattress is covered in plastic. The rest of him was cold, his back was hot and sticky. So, I lifted him up and put a fleecy blanket under him and spent quite some time calming him down. By the way, the magical pink fluid was working and his temperature had dropped a little.
He slept on, rather fitfully and broken by odd little whimpers and gurgles, but nonetheless he slept. There's nothing so cute as a small child huddled up on their front, knees tucked up underneath him and bum sticking up in the air.
I slept fitfully and had odd broken dreams. Andy decided that for the good of both of us it was better to sleep downstairs on the sofa bed. A wise decision as I woke up at 5am with a totally stuffed up nose and needing to sneeze. I'd probably been snoring before then.
In the morning I still felt rough and was struggling to function. Joseph was behaving as if he was made of indiarubber, bouncing around all over the place. No-one could guess he'd had a potentially serious fever the night before.
Tonight he's having a bath and managing to do the usual of getting more water out of the bath than in. He's fully recovered, I've still got aches here and there and although my temperature is back to normal (thank-you paracetamol) I still feel rather off.

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