See this face?
This is the face of a kiddo who doesn't feel well. Let's see, last week Coop just wasn't sleeping well. He was up an hour or so after we put him down. Then Friday the snotty nose and cough we had a few months ago came back. And then toward the end of the week we noticed that Cooper was a little...stopped up. We cut out the bananas and switched to apples to help things move along, but by Saturday the kid was just not happy. I mean, really, I get it. He squirmed, and wiggled, and fussed, and cried. Finally I ran to Kroger, grabbed some prunes, and gave it a whirl. Sunday morning things were moving in the right direction.
Until we hit another road block. For some reason he's decided to boycott naps on the weekend. The little fart naps religiously from 12-2ish every.stinking.day at daycare. Get him home on the weekends...and after 1/2 an hour he's up like a little turtle in the crib. Some days I fight it and some days I figure he'll sleep when he's tired. Saturday was more of the same, so Sunday Jason decided to hold him while he napped. I
had to get some work done so I didn't care what he did. However, he noticed that after he coughed in his sleep there was a 3-4 second delay before his normal breathing pattern started up again.
We talked and thought about it and finally I called the after-hours clinic. A whopping 5 minutes before closing time. I won't go into it, but there were words thrown around like "ER" and well...that makes for a fun Sunday afternoon. However, I just didn't really feel like that was the right decision. I just got a strange vibe and felt like we'd be wasting hours of our time to find out Cooper had a cold. But really, do you want to take that chance with your kid? No, not really. So we got dressed, packed his diaper bag, grabbed a few books and more than a few toys and went to the local ER.
Where we sat in the parking lot. After much deliberation we called the pedi again to speak to an on-call nurse. We'd decided that we really felt rushed on the first phone call and they were asking me questions that I didn't quite understand and we just wanted a little more information. Come to find out this nurse wasn't quite as worried about the delay in breathing as she was the rattle in his chest. She suggested a few home remedies (have him drink water, steam up the bathroom, etc) and told us to take him in the next day. I felt much better - especially since Cooper was in the best mood he'd been in all weekend.
We did make the mistake of letting him sleep in our bed that night...just to be sure. The only result of that is that none of us slept too well. Monday he was back in his crib.
I left work early to run him to the doctor Monday afternoon really thinking that we'd be sent home with instructions to run the humidifier and use the saline drops. Instead we came home with a prescription for antibiotics and our first ear infection. Son of a biscuit. I'm a believer that once you get one ear infection, you're doomed for more. Please, someone, tell me that's not true. Please.
Coop has been a little fussy in the evening and I can tell he just feels funky. He's pulled on his ears, although it's nothing new. I think he sometimes does it as a way to show he's pissed. He's not had any fever - thankfully. And he still sleeps ok ((holding my breath)). Hopefully this antibiotic will kick his ears butt and we'll be over this before we can blink. I'm just glad he did what he did on Sunday because if not, I probably would have just assumed his teeth hurt and he had a cold and we'd still be sitting here on Wednesday without a visit to the doctor.
That about sums up the last week. Oh, and if you're around my house and hear someone screaming like their limb is being cut off...don't worry. That's just me attacking Cooper with a box of tissues and the snot-sucker. Who would have thought that blue bulb could so closely resemble a Medieval torture device?
