E.’s First Fever

Yesterday I noticed the E. didn’t seem like his normal cheerful self and in the early evening he started to feel pretty warm. I took his temperature and it was 101 and some degrees, and so N. and I took made an appointment with our pediatrician’s after hours clinc. There his temperature was a little over 102, and because he’s so little still they wanted to run some urine and possibly blood tests to find out why.

Here’s the part I’m really ashamed of: when they were going to insert the catheter, they wanted me to sit by him and hold his arms and try and keep him calm. And I just lost it and started crying. I just felt so bad that E. was feeling so awful. He had been whimpering almost constantly for a couple of hours and it was obvious that he was miserable. And the whole catheter thing was freaking me out. E.’s so little! So N. held him. It was pretty bad because E. had just wet his diaper and so they had to stick the catheter way up there to get any pee at all. Of course E. totally freaked out. I still feel bad that I wimped out. I should have been there for him.

After they looked at his urine, they wanted to look at his blood so they sent us over to the hospital to get it drawn. It was now after 9pm and the outpatient lab was closed, so we had to wait in the emergency room for someone to draw it there. We were there for almost an hour before someone could be spared to do it. This time I did better though. I was collected enough to hold him down as they put the little tourniquet on his tiny arm and drew the blood. Argh! The whole thing was so sad.

So after that and around 10pm we were back over the clinic. They close at 10 but were waiting to get E.’s blood results and for us. It turned out that the type of red blood cells that the body releases from bone marrow when it’s fighting an infection were elevated. After talking with the doctor it was decided to give E. a one-time shot of antibiotics. So I had to hold him down again for that. Good times!

We got home a little after 10:30pm. I massaged E.’s thigh where he got his shot (he screamed bloody murder, of course) and gave him some baby Tylenol like the doctor said to and put him to bed. He fussed for a little while and then feel asleep, exhausted. He woke up screaming around 4am this morning and I jumped out of bed in a panic and ran across the hallway to his room, running smack into the door in the process. (I’m so unused to him screaming that it really kind of freaks me out.) But he’s now sleeping in his swing.

*sigh* I am so wiped out! We have a follow up appointment for E. this afternoon. Hopefully we’ll find out that the antibiotic has helped.

Anyway, here are some of E. with his cousins Big E. and Little E. who were visiting this weekend. It was really fun to see them and N.’s sister G. and her husband.

G., who is pregnant, had a craving for chajangmyun (Korean black bean paste noodles) and radish kimchi. Both sounded good to me and so we made some noodles and got out the kimchi. As G. and I were eating, Little E. declared that she wanted some noodles. So G. gave her a taste. And Little E. declared that she wanted more noodles! She ended up eating almost a third of the bowl. I think G. was torn was between annoyance at having to share so many of her noodles and pride that her daughter was eating Korean food; the pride definitely won out. Little E. also wanted to try the kimchi, but that didn’t go over as well!