Another day, another fucking ear infection. We literally just spent 3 weeks in the fucking trenches battling an ear infection - a double ear infection actually. Three medicines, multiple doctor visits, me slightly losing my sanity. There are times I question how much more I have to give to this fight. How much more sickness can we handle? I say that, but I know full well that I will give everything I have to get and keep this kid healthy and thriving. I'm Gandolf the Gray and I will fight this ear infection to the depths of the mountain if that is what it takes.
RB started rubbing his ears a day and a half ago and I fucking knew it. I fucking knew that he had another ear infection. So I made an appointment to take him in and I had a couple of people tell me they felt like I was jumping the gun. I fucking knew he had an ear infection. So I will be damned if I didn't just leave the doctor's office after she confirmed he has another double ear infection. I didn't even leave with a prescription because she's got to go look at his notes and see what we can even take for this because we just had three different medicines in our system within the last two months and they don't like to repeat things in the same two months.
I am fucking losing it. Part of the cause is water. But this baby loves water. I am not going to take away a source of his joy. So I guess I'm going to figure out what the fuck baby fucking ear plugs look like or something. Sigh. I'm doing all of this voice to text and I just did a big fucking sigh and it did not capture that. It makes me feel like a real shit mom that I cannot keep my son's ears from oozing. Seems like that should be one of the easier wins of being a mom. Keeping their ears from being infected and causing everyone to be miserable. Alas, that is not in my mom wheelhouse.
Anyway. Thanks for listening to this rant.
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I'm back, the next day. RB started his medicine last night and took another dose this morning. All seemed well. We also had to do ear drops which he's very unhappy about but he is coping. I got a call from daycare at around 2:30 or 3:00 today letting me know that RB has vomited three times. I, in my obsessive nature, ask for descriptions of the vomit. They provide the descriptions of the vomit. They asked me if I know what the possible cause could be. I had already notified them that he had probably had an ear infection going on but I did not tell them what the doctor's diagnosis was after our appointment yesterday afternoon. So I let them know that he had a double ear infection again and we had started a new medicine the night before. I then called the pediatrician to get confirmation that it was indeed the ear infection causing the vomiting. If you've been with me on this blog for a hot minute, you probably are familiar with the vomit comet that was RB a few months ago when he got his first ear infection. That was the first and only sign for us that he even had an ear infection, the violent vomiting. This time he didn't vomit until after he got his medicine but I did at least know that vomiting is a symptom that he displays when he is dealing with an ear infection.
The pediatrician confirmed that it was the medicine actually at work. She said that the medicine was getting all of them mucus out of his head which was then flowing to his stomach and his stomach is not equipped to deal with that so his stomach's just getting it out and whatever means necessary. I don't really appreciate his stomach being so aggressive about it but I guess I get it. I called the daycare back and told him what the doctor it said, asked if I needed to go ahead and pick him up, and they said no, so long as it wasn't related to a stomach bug, they were okay to keep him. Told them I'd see them in an hour and a half for pickup.
I tried to do a little more work, but that was really hard because I was feeling like shit. Just like total shit. I don't really know how to explain why I feel so terrible when he's sick. It all feels very preventable. Like an ear infection feels like it should be very preventable. And yet I'm not able to prevent them. That's really frustrating.
Anyway so I sat at my desk and cried for a little while, felt really stressed, cried a little more, then I noticed that it was 5:00 and then I needed to go ahead and go get him. Left to go get him and when I get there he is in a Holly jolly mood and I am so hopeful that he stopped vomiting.
I asked the woman who is in the room he was in if he'd stop vomiting and she said no in fact he had not, he had vomited as recently as 30 minutes prior to me getting there. That was a disappointing little bit of news. He was in a great mood though, so we had that going for us.
I grab him, I put him in the car, we head home and he's trying to fall asleep in the car but that's like a cardinal rule in our house is do not let the baby fall asleep in the car. That will fuck up the rest of your evening. To some people it may seem cruel that I sing loudly and clap and tell my baby to stay awake when he's trying to doze off in the car, but those people have never been used and abused by an overtired RB after 7:00 p.m. I know it sounds like that he wouldn't be overtired if he took a little nap in the car but actually naps in the car are bullshit and they do absolutely nothing for him other than make him think he's had a nap when in reality he hasn't so he'll want to stay up later and then we'll fight and then he'll go to sleep after crying and then I will also go to sleep after crying as well.
I get in the car, I keep him awake, and we get home. We're home for, I don't know, 3 minutes? When the first vomit on Mama happens. He vomited on me in the kitchen. It was not ideal timing but when is it ever ideal timing to get vomited on. I was so hungry I was starting to get shaky and my head was starting to hurt and really the last thing I wanted was to be vomited on, like I hadn't really thought about it prior to that moment but if I had ranked things that I didn't want to happen to me from "eh, that's okay" to "I definitely do not want that happening in this moment", vomiting on me would have been one. Would have been like at the very ladder of the list. Obviously RB does not care about the ranking of my dislikes because he did what he had to do. I immediately changed my shirt and stripped him down and started trying to get some Pedialyte in his little body. I did power through the overwhelming vomit smell that encapsulated us both and tried to eat something.
We went upstairs to go do a little bath time. I actually got on this really cool blow up bathtub that's like a transition bathtub from a baby seat to a big tub so that he can't necessarily crawl around but he can sit on his butt and kind of explore what it means to sit on your butt in the bathtub. Tonight was the first time we used it. I was pretty excited about it, he was excited about it but at the same time he felt like shit and he was exhausted so I'm hoping to get a better reaction once he feels better. We do bath time, it's pretty chilling. I've learned to give RB his medicine in the bath because there are nights that he will decide he's just going to spew it right back at me and that's a hell of a lot easier to clean up off of both of us if he doesn't even have PJs on yet. I go ahead and give him his medicine he really does not want it but we managed to get it down, give him some Motrin. then he decides it's time to get out of the bath very suddenly and violently by screaming at me, but I don't blame him, because I know he feels bad.
I get him out of the bath and I get him in here, and by here I mean his room because this is where I'm voice to texting this, and I started to put his PJs on him. He started to get a little fussy so I start doing my own rap rendition of "Tony Chestnut (Toe Knee Chest Nut) Knows I Love You." If you've never heard Tony Chestnut, it's a banger, and by a banger, I mean it's a very catchy short nursery rhyme that my son loves. One night he was being an extra spicy little guy, so I decided I was going to sing Tony Chestnut Knows I Love You in a number of styles, including but not limited to country, rap, Frank Sinatra style. Rap was the one that was easiest for me and also most enjoyable for RB so that's kind of one that's stuck. Tonight he started getting a little spicy so I decided I was going to do my little rap song of Tony Chestnut Knows I Love You, obviously with the choreography as well. He started laughing and it seemed very hopeful that I was going to get his PJs on him and we were going to go to bed without another vomit situation. That was until about 10 seconds later when I saw him start gagging.
I see him start gagging and I go to pick him up, but I'm too late and he vomits all over himself, all over the changing table, all over his PJs, all over his sleep sack, and all over me. I once again have to strip us both down. This time I just did a little whore's bath, as I call them on them, because I didn't want to put him back in the bathtub because he was so exhausted already. I just wiped him down and decided we'd take another bath in the morning. Judge me or don't, I do not much care which. I'm currently writing this while I'm rocking a sports bra that smells like absolute baby vomit. You know, I don't even want to call it baby vomit because it just smells like straight vomit. But, hey, we're cuddling and it's making him very happy while he's trying to get into a deep sleep, so I don't really care that I look like I just went through a car wash that instead of washing cars it pours hot vomit on mothers.
Take a shot for every time I said vomit in this. No, just kidding, you would actually vomit by the end of this. Now I've got him snuggled up in some PJs, we've got a clean sleep sack on, and I'm going to do some laundry as soon as I walk out of here. I really, really hope that his tummy settles. He's got about 2 oz of Pedialyte in him and about 2 oz of formula in him. Just trying to get him something to sustain him because he hasn't eaten since like this morning because he was feeling sick and he didn't want to eat earlier today.
I'm really hoping that it's not going to be the rough night that I'm expecting, even though in my heart of hearts I know tonight is going to be super shitty. But that's okay. He needs me and I'm here. That doesn't mean that I'm like super excited about it. Or that I won't feel like absolute shit tomorrow because of it. But I guess that's what moms do. We do that shit that nobody else wants to do, that smelly, hot, vomiting, sick shit. That's what I'm here to do. And then occasionally make him laugh by aggressively rapping songs that have no business being rapped.
Anyway that's my story. I'm going to lay him down and I guess I'm going to go take a little whore's bath myself because the smell of throw up is definitely starting to soak into my nostrils and I'm really not sure how much more of this I can take.
Hope your night is a lot cleaner than mine is going to be.
This is a multi-day journey. I started this on a Tuesday and now I write to you from a Thursday.
RB didn't have as rough of a night as I expected. He was fine until about 10:30 or so, at which point he threw up again and was very upset with his experience. I changed him and his bedding and got him back to sleep, and I'll be damned if that beautiful boy didn't sleep straight through the night and up until 7:45 this morning. Unexpected!
We went to the doctor this morning because I'd booked the appointment yesterday and thought we might as well go if we have the appointment. The doctor basically said the same thing they'd told me yesterday, that it's likely just the amount of mucus in his stomach his body is rejecting and that's what's happening. They said to keep an eye on him (like I am watching anything else?!) for the next 24 hours and if he keeps up the great exodus, they'd reassess his medicine.
He's at home with us today. We got back from his appointment and had some breakfast, which consisted of fresh banana and pedialyte. The breakfast of champions. He hung out with me in my office for a while where we played a very fun round of "throw all the stuff off of Mommy's desk and onto the floor!" He is very good at that game. He's about two hours into a nap now and I'm letting him sleep as long as his little body wants to.
We're 14 hours without incident right now. Ironically, I got a note from daycare that 5 infants have a stomach bug, and we are one of the five. It's my first time being one of the group in a school note. Feels like weird. SO, either it's the medicine or it's a stomach bug. Seems like we've won on that front for now. Here's to hoping it keeps!
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