Q: What’s worse than being stuck at home with a sick, cranky toddler?

A: Being stuck at home with a sick, cranky toddler, while PREGNANT! 😐

Sunday afternoon Jonas started running a fever. It wasn’t very responsive to our usual treatment of alternating Tylenol and Motrin, but it did eventually break in the middle of the night.

Monday morning, when he woke up, his fever was low – around 101.6 – and he was in much better spirits. Then in the afternoon it was like a switch flipped. Suddenly he was cranky, agitated, crying, inconsolable – and when I took his temp it had spiked up to 103.6.

Freaked me right out, I tell you.

I called Chris and he said it worried him, too; I should call our family doctor and get Jonas in as soon as possible. Our doctor wasn’t available, but they fit us in with the practice’s PA for later that afternoon, and Chris even came home from work early to go with us to the appointment. (So that tells you he was concerned!) As a surgeon, Chris doesn’t have a TON of experience with peds cases, but he knows enough that he was running through the possibilities in his head and he told me later he thought they might send us to Children’s for a chest x-ray and bloodwork.

Luckily, the PA was very nice. He’s a grandfatherly sort of guy, and Jonas warmed right up to him. He even let Mr. Ravencraft look in his mouth & throat, which he NEVER does for our doctor! Jonas’ ears checked out fine, his nose was just run-of-the-mill stuffy, and his throat was red and inflamed. There were no ——-? (I’m totally blanking on the word, but it means the pus that shows up back there when you have strep) so Mr. R. diagnosed Jonas with tonsillitis. He put him on a 10-day course of amoxicillin, mainly because of that scary temp spike. He told us that when fevers gradually creep up and back down, that’s one thing – but those quick, high spikes are a little more worrisome because children can be susceptible to febrile seizures.

Last night was a long one. Jonas’ temp never got back up as high, but he was still clearly sick & miserable. He slept fitfully in bed with me (I wanted to watch him – that warning about seizures scared the crap out of me, to be honest) and then woke up around 9:00 and wanted to eat. His appetite has been next to nothing for three days, so we were happy to feed him – he just couldn’t figure out what he wanted. Frustrating! He did finally get to sleep – for a few hours in his bed, then back into our bed for the rest of the night.

This morning he still has a low-grade fever (I’m not sure the exact #, because he has started to realize exactly where that thing is going when I get it out and freaks out a little bit, so I’m trying not to go overboard with taking his temp) but he’s in better spirits. We’ve watched the first ten minutes of 101 Dalmatians, Cars, and The Lion King. (So much for an attention span, huh?) He has eaten 2/3 of a cereal bar (and if you know my kid, that alone would tell you he’s sick – normally he’d eat a bar for every meal of the day if we’d let him!) and he enthusiastically asked for his vitamins (they’re gummies & the closest thing to candy he gets – he loves those things).

Mr. Ravencraft advised us it would probably be 48 hours before his fever totally stops and he’s feeling better – and we have to wait until he’s fever free for 24 hours before we can go out to playgroups and the like. So it’s going to be a long week of cabin fever around here, I can tell.

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I had planned to start on that write-up about Make Your Own Baby Food, but that obviously hasn’t happened with all the fever monitoring and sleepless nights & days. It’s on my to-do list, though! 🙂