Down With the Sickness

Howdy gang,

                Man, I just can’t believe how time seems to slip away from me. It has been a busy and eventful week and a half, so I guess I better just hop in to it. Eh?

                Two weekends ago, Elizabeth was pretty sick as I covered in “The Power of Ewok Compels You”. I never really gave the ending to that story though. We didn’t end up going to the wedding that weekend; we chilled at home since Ewok was still not at 100%. She had shown some serious improvement by Saturday, but we are glad we stayed home since it kind of hit round 2 Saturday evening. By about 11PM that night, my wife and I started to get worried about dehydration. She was pale, she hadn’t peed in several hours and hadn’t pooped since Friday afternoon. We made the call to take her to Urgent Care right away on Sunday morning. We were pretty much the first ones there and were seen right away this time. The staff were totally amazing! I really can’t emphasize that enough. They immediately guessed that we were first time parents and did their best to calm our fears. Almost as soon as we got in to the exam room she had a massive piss (or “pee butt” as we call them”) which kind of made us feel dumb. The nurse and the doc looked her over and said that she had some very slight signs of dehydration, but that we were doing everything right and it looked like she was over the hump. It was such a weird place to be in as a parent. We didn’t want to be “those” parents that worry about every sniffle, but we had started to get very worried by Saturday night. We left feeling a little stupid, but the staff made us feel great for doing everything we could and not totally waiting it out either. The doctor also told us we had to have at least 10 babies since Elizabeth was so cute.

                By Sunday afternoon she seemed to be feeling much better. She took a massive shit. And I do mean massive! It was so big and forceful (remember she hadn’t pooped for about a full 48 hours) that it obviously was a chore for her to push it out. I had a dad-fail when I went to change it and I ended up gagging myself and throwing up. A lot of my friends, family and coworkers gave me shit (no pun intended) but I feel like I need to explain the actual situation before you can judge. Remember, I had hardly slept for about 4 days, wasn’t eating right, and this was no ordinary poop. This was the type of poop that I would have if I had only eaten the poops of hobos that had exclusively eaten skunk asses. And there was soooooo much of it! It just kept coming! It ended up being a 3 diaper poop once everything was said and done. The good news though, was by Sunday afternoon and after her massive adult sized dump, she was feeling about 95% better. She went back to daycare on Monday and did really well. The daycare teachers had told us that she was more fussy than normal, but that it was easily solved by being held. “Easily solved by being held” is a relative term though I realize, as when there are 2 teachers for 8+ infants, they simply don’t have enough hands. I even apologized to the teachers since her need to be held was TOTALLY my bad. While she was sick we took a lot of naps in my recliner and I kind of let her get away with murder for 4.5 days. Dad-fail number 2 I guess.

                Everything seemed right as rain until last Thursday when we got a phone call from daycare saying that Elizabeth had a high fever. Due to a work commitment, my wife couldn’t call in so I had to. “Had to” is a very loose term by the way, I had an incredibly shitty day on Wednesday at work so being able to spend the day with my daughter while napping and watching The Office really wasn’t much of a punishment. By 9am when I picked her up, her fever had peaked at 103.4F! I could tell immediately that she wasn’t feeling good. She was fussy, she was pale, and she was super snuggly. We got home and had some Tylenol, ate and took a insane 2.5 hour nap. By the time she woke up her fever was already down to 99F. My wife was texting me all day for updates and she gave me the unique challenge of taking a rectal temperature. I had never taken one and I had to look up the directions. As it turned out though, saying that Ewok was uncooperative would be the biggest understatement of the century. I found a different thermometer that allowed for an armpit temp and it was down to 98F. By early afternoon, she was hungry, she was playing, she was smiling, and she was giggling. I had been pretty confident from the beginning that the fever was just from teething and by Friday morning we saw a tooth starting. Daycare still wouldn’t let us bring her in until 24 hours had passed from the fever breaking. “Luckily”, my wife was able to stay home this time and took her to daycare later that morning.

                We had a house guest for a good chunk of this last weekend as well, my best friend Thad Dickson was home from Boston for a family wedding, I will have more about that in an upcoming post, but Elizabeth loved playing with Uncle Thad! It took her a while to warm up to him, but once she did it was constant smiles and giggles. Seriously, he might be her new favorite toy. There are a few pictures up on the Fatterhood Facebook page if you are interested. Long story short, we are seriously planning a trip out to Boston sometime in the spring or summer to go see him and his wonderful girlfriend. He kept bringing up how much and how fast she has changed since he last saw her and it has had bee looking through pictures on my phone. My god is he right?! She used to be a scrunched face little peanut and now she is actually looking and acting like a little human!

                All and all I am super glad that she is feeling better. The whole experience totally dicked her sleeping schedule, but she is back to her old happy-go-lucky self. Teething still blows though. As per usual, thank you all for reading and check out Fatterhood on Facebook. Another post will be coming shortly (for real this time), but don’t be afraid to catch up on older posts as well. Prost!