After our trip to hospital on Sunday, I was left with the impression that Nathan would be much better on Monday except that the cough was likely to hang around for 7 to 10 days.  In fact, the doctor told me that Nathan would probably be ok to go to childcare, so I had high hopes that I would make it to my last two (official) days of work.  However, on Monday Nathan was really unhappy, easily upset and of course as soon as something caused him to cry he’d have a coughing fit.  I decided to stay home to look after him for the day, hoping he’d be ok the following day.  He was really tired during the day, but after a long (though very broken) day sleep he seemed to be a lot better.  So I tried to drop him off at Ebony’s house on Tuesday morning, but he obviously wasn’t himself and got upset really easily and didn’t want to let me out of his sight.  So I packed him back into the car and drove home, which I was really glad I did because he had some very unhappy crying/coughing periods throughout the day.  He had a really bad night, waking numerous times and screaming until he had coughing fits.  This morning I noticed some dried blood at the entrance to one of his ears, and decided I’d had enough of not knowing what was going on and made an appointment with a GP.

The doctor took one look in the ear with the blood in it and said “well, I know why he’s been waking up screaming”.  The poor tyke has an ear infection, is on antibiotics three times a day for the next 10 days and then has to go back to the doctor so she can determine if he’s perforated his ear drum.  Apparently blood blisters can develop in the ear drum and burst, which is what must have happened to Nathan.

So I’m now hoping that the snot, grizzles, screaming, broken nights and coughing will all get sorted out relatively quickly now that Nathan’s on antibiotics and getting several doses of Panadol a day to relieve the pain, and we have our happy little boy back again soon.  I’m also hoping that there’s been no damage done to Nathan’s ear drum.

Nathan woke up Saturday morning at 5 am (nearly an hour earlier than normal) sounding like he had smoked a packet of cigarettes a day for the last 40 years.  His voice was very croaky and had the occasional cough.  I figured he was getting a cold, since Andrew had been feeling a bit flu-y earlier in the week.  The interesting thing was that one of the first things Nathan did was to run to the fridge, get the Panadol out of the fridge and ask for ‘medicine to feel better’.  He hadn’t done this since he was sick last time (a few months ago?) with a fever that lasted for 3 days.  Since I couldn’t work out what the problem was (besides the croaky voice) I put the Panadol back in the fridge and we got on with our day.

We were planning on going to Julie’s 40th birthday party that evening, and to my disappointment (and despite the early morning), Nathan slept just over an hour for his midday sleep.  I had no idea how we were going to manage an evening out with a toddler who hadn’t had enough sleep.  In the afternoon we noticed that Nathan had a slightly elevated temperature, and by 5 pm it was 38 degrees.  We decided to stay home in the evening and try to let Nathan have as much sleep as he could get in the hopes that he would be better this morning.

Nathan slept fitfully from 8 pm until midnight when he woke with a 39 degree fever and the worst cough I’ve ever heard.  It made it very difficult for Nathan (and anyone else, for that matter) to sleep.  He breastfed for hours as it was the only thing that seemed to calm him and he finally fell asleep in my arms and slept there for the rest of the night.  Unfortunately Nathan still had the horrible cough yesterday morning, and while he seemed happy enough in himself most of the time (he ate breakfast, played with grandma (who visited us for the weekend) and ran around giggling), the activity would set off coughing fits.  After a couple of hours he became more subdued, seemed to be having trouble breathing when distressed/coughing but was able to be calmed down with a breastfeed.   Andrew and I were anxious enough about his difficulty in breathing to take him to the Children’s Hospital (why does he always seem to get sick on the weekends?).

We rocked up at Emergency at the Children’s Hosptial around 10 am yesterday morning and had Nathan’s name put on the waiting list to see the triage nurse.  There seemed to be four children ahead of us, but when one of the nurses heard Nathan coughing she came out to the waiting area to check him out and then took us into a room where she entered all our details and organised an acute care bed for him.  A doctor checked him out then and gave him a steroid to relax the airways and he was then monitored for the next couple of hours.  Needless to say that as soon as the medicine started to make Nathan feel better, he was a real handful to keep out of trouble….there’s a lot of interesting looking things in a hospital!!!  He ripped off the sticker on his toe that was monitoring his heart rate and oxygen levels too, but he obviously didn’t need them by that time since they weren’t replaced.  When the doctor came back to check him out we were told we could go home, and he also gave us a steroid tablet to give to Nathan that evening to help him through Sunday night.  We finally left the hospital around 2 pm, a little more knowledgeable about signs of breathing distress and with a very exhausted toddler.

Nathan slept well last night and today is a lot better and though he is still having nasty coughing fits, he isn’t having trouble breathing through them (and the horrible barking sound associated with it all has gone).  Still, he is very easily upset and of course that sets off a coughing fit, so we are having a quiet day at home today.

Nathan often says his little phrases over and over again, and on the way to the hospital yesterday he was saying “doctor, medicine, feel better”.  Thankfully he was right!

Nathan is sick again, this time with what we think is Coxsackie virus…hand, foot and mouth disease.  The last couple of nights have been pretty bad in the sleep department, in that he wouldn’t stay asleep unless he was in bed with me.  Day sleeps have been just as bad, needing to be rocked to sleep (or going to sleep in the car seat)  and waking as soon as anything changed.  The success rate of moving a sleeping Nathan in the last 48 hours have been 0, which is not like him at all.  I think my arms are about to drop off after rocking him back to sleep after almost every single sleep cycle since yesterday afternoon!

Whenever Nathan has been sick in the past he’s been comforted by being breastfed.  In fact, breastfeeding has been the single most successful way of comforting Nathan when upset, sick or hurt…until now.  The poor tyke has a swollen mouth, tongue and lips, blisters in his mouth as well, and seems to be unable to suck.  He seems to want to breastfeed (he brings me the tri-pillow that I feed him on which has been his way of requesting a feed for a long time now), but doesn’t even attempt it when given the opportunity.  He also has a few blisters on his feet, a couple on his hands, and many on his bum.  He’s getting a rash on his legs and arms now, and yesterday had a low-grade fever.  He dribbles like there’s a river coming out of his mouth, and he spends half the day crying inconsolably.

I took him to the GP today, and she told me to keep him away from other people and in particular other children so as not to spread the virus…that’s until the blisters are dried up.  She told me to get as much drink as possible into him, because the biggest risk is that he decides not to drink and she said some children end up in hospital to get rehydrated.  He’s drinking, but not as much as I would like as he’s only done 3 wees today (4 am, 11 am and 3 pm) and he normally averages about 1 every hour when he’s awake (though I guess the fountain coming out of his mouth could be a factor).  She also suggested baby Panadol on a regular basis to help relieve his discomfort, and she recommended not travelling to Melbourne today or tomorrow as we had planned.  She said if he gets worse to bring him back tomorrow, or take him to the Children’s hospital on the weekend.

So, unfortunately, it currently looks like our trip to Melbourne for Andrew’s dad’s 60th birthday is off.  I was looking forward to having a bit of time away (but not under the sad conditions of our last two recent trips to Melbourne).

Now that Nathan is a year old, I’ve decided to only do blogs about his development once a month instead of twice, but it seems like such a long time since I did his 12 month post!  The boy obviously has so much more confidence about his walking ability these days that he isn’t taking as much care and is consequently doing a lot of falling over.  That, combined with the fact that he has been sick for at least a week and not sleeping well, means that we’ve had more crying and screaming in the last couple of weeks than I think we had in his entire first year!

Nathan had his 12 month vaccinations on February 11, and about 4 days later he started to get a bit snuffly.  I tend to think it’s a total coincidence, but back then I wasn’t sure if the two were related.  He gradually got more and more snuffly until he had quite a runny and snotty nose.  I couldn’t work out what he had because he didn’t really sneeze or cough, so wasn’t sure if he had a cold or not.  He was really REALLY unhappy being left at Ebony’s house last Tuesday while I went to work, and that night I thought vaguely that he seemed a bit hot.  It wasn’t until Wednesday last week that I took his temperature and it was 39.5 degrees.  The next two days the poor tyke had a high temperature, and I dosed him with Panandol when it went above 39 degrees.  I made an appointment to take him to the GP on Friday, but of course his fever had improved and so I decided to cancel the appointment (only to find that he didn’t really have one booked!?).  Yesterday he came out in spots all over his head, tummy (chest wasn’t so bad) and back.  They were not bright red spots, just pale pinkish but quite obvious.  Why is it that we all get sick on weekends when there are no GP’s working?  I rang Health Direct Australia and spoke to a nurse who thought that he had a Roseola rash, which is caused by a virus but doesn’t really cause any real problems.  I was advised, as a precaution, to keep him away from other children until the spots disappeared, which should be gone within 3 days.

So hopefully Nathan will start sleeping better again soon so that he’s not tired and grumpy, that he will feel better soon, and stop falling down and bumping his head (possibly due to tiredness?).  I really want my happy baby/toddler back, this tired, constantly grizzly and crying one is really really draining for Andrew and I!