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Dec. 9th, 2005 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaThe worst thing about getting a cold when you're the mother of an infant is that you know you'll suffer twice - once when you yourself are sick, and then again when the baby catches it.
We are all three of us sick. Michael had it first, then me; Alex is on her third miserable night. During the day she seems fine - she's coughing, sure, and her nose is running, but she laughs and plays and crawls all over the place pointing out new venues for childproofing.
The nights are something else.
She's been in bed for three hours, and I've had to go in to her five or six times. A couple of times she's been soothable with a pacifier and some gentle patting, but mostly I have to pick her up and rock her back to sleep while she whimpers and tries to catch her breath through clogged nostrils. I just did something unspeakable with a bottle of spray saline and a bulb syringe, which accomplished nothing but a long bout of hysterical, back-arched screaming. If she puts me in a substandard nursing home when I'm eighty, it will be because she remembers the bulb syringe.
Last night I slept with her. When we first moved her into my bed, at bedtime, she slept for three hours more-or-less straight. I didn't, because I kept alerting to her every twitch, trying to soothe her to stay sleep before she really woke up, but I can sort of sleepwalk through that kind of thing and still feel moderately rested. But the rest of the night was less successful. She was restless. She woke a lot and cried a lot, in ways that required my full alertness.
We've elevated the head of her bed to help her breathe, and we try to encourage her to sleep on her side for the same reason. There's a vaporizer moistening the room air and a heater to keep the vaporizer from giving her a chill. She's medicated with Tylenol for the raw throat which Michael and I are sure she has, given how our throats felt a couple of days ago, except for the intervals in which she comes off the Tylenol so I can see if she has a fever. She's too young for cough medicines or decongestants. We're doing everything we can.
It's a cold, and nothing serious. Her doctor told us to expect six or eight colds to hit her inexperienced immune system this winter.
If I were breastfeeding, she would already be getting my antibodies to this virus. If I were breastfeeding, she wouldn't have been laid as low by the stomach virus she had at Thanksgiving - she could have nursed through it, and we wouldn't have had to deal with the temporary formula intolerance. I wonder if not-breastfeeding guilt is ever going to stop stabbing me in the gut at random intervals.
We are all three of us sick. Michael had it first, then me; Alex is on her third miserable night. During the day she seems fine - she's coughing, sure, and her nose is running, but she laughs and plays and crawls all over the place pointing out new venues for childproofing.
The nights are something else.
She's been in bed for three hours, and I've had to go in to her five or six times. A couple of times she's been soothable with a pacifier and some gentle patting, but mostly I have to pick her up and rock her back to sleep while she whimpers and tries to catch her breath through clogged nostrils. I just did something unspeakable with a bottle of spray saline and a bulb syringe, which accomplished nothing but a long bout of hysterical, back-arched screaming. If she puts me in a substandard nursing home when I'm eighty, it will be because she remembers the bulb syringe.
Last night I slept with her. When we first moved her into my bed, at bedtime, she slept for three hours more-or-less straight. I didn't, because I kept alerting to her every twitch, trying to soothe her to stay sleep before she really woke up, but I can sort of sleepwalk through that kind of thing and still feel moderately rested. But the rest of the night was less successful. She was restless. She woke a lot and cried a lot, in ways that required my full alertness.
We've elevated the head of her bed to help her breathe, and we try to encourage her to sleep on her side for the same reason. There's a vaporizer moistening the room air and a heater to keep the vaporizer from giving her a chill. She's medicated with Tylenol for the raw throat which Michael and I are sure she has, given how our throats felt a couple of days ago, except for the intervals in which she comes off the Tylenol so I can see if she has a fever. She's too young for cough medicines or decongestants. We're doing everything we can.
It's a cold, and nothing serious. Her doctor told us to expect six or eight colds to hit her inexperienced immune system this winter.
If I were breastfeeding, she would already be getting my antibodies to this virus. If I were breastfeeding, she wouldn't have been laid as low by the stomach virus she had at Thanksgiving - she could have nursed through it, and we wouldn't have had to deal with the temporary formula intolerance. I wonder if not-breastfeeding guilt is ever going to stop stabbing me in the gut at random intervals.
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Date: 2005-12-12 03:37 pm (UTC)Squeaky had a couple icky colds when she was small because -- another guilt trigger -- she went to a sitter's where her kids were CONSTANTLY sick. Even breastfeeding doesn't produce the antibodies unless *mom* gets the cold first, so squeaky and I were on a "delayed production" schedule on that front. And squeaky HATED the boogarsucker. HATE. ED.
Instead, we'd relax in the bathroom and I'd let her nurse while the hot shower steamed the room -- the boob isn't the integral part here, but allowing her to get her nose to clear itself while she's drinking really helps. The steam softens everything a lot gentler than saline spray. And the room would get so warm and snuggly, and anything down in her chest would get steamed open too. It was just a very low-pressure way to help her "open up" and get more comfy. When she was VERY small I'd prop her sideways a bit while she slept, hoping that the mucous would drain to one side, keeping the other side open so she would be breathing better.
Also, letting her sleep on her stomach -- usually on top of me -- seemed to help her "drain" better too. Plus being all snuggly together was a big comfort to both of us.
There are so many "should of"s in motherhood, and most of them are pretty upsetting. But more importantly, there are the "Wow. There it is"s that make everything else a lot less important.