March 21, 2008

Sicky


Vaccinations are not cool. Granted, they are more cool than polio, but on the bell curve of cool vs. not cool I'd have to rate them right next to food poisoning, or dealing with someone with food poisoning. This week didn’t start that great either. I acquired a bit of a sniffle from a party we went to last weekend. I suspect Jeff from the bicycle coalition brought the germs, although I have no concrete evidence to support my theory. In any case I was a bit run down, and Alden was a bit run down (not full-on bed rest sick, but we were both definitely feeling poorly). And to add to the little guy’s trouble, we took him for his 2 month battery of shots Wednesday.

On a side note I want to say that I was much better behaved with my illness than Alden. It was very interesting to have the lil’ fella going through essentially the same physical distress as I was and to see how his psyche dealt with it. He was able to maintain pretty well, blowing bubbles out his mouth and being cranky, but the vaccinations sent him over the edge.

Being both vaccinated-sick and regular sick was too much for him. He wasn’t inconsolable, but he needed active comforting at all times or else he would spiral into much-unhappiness-land. At the doctor's office he was comforted by the sushing noise and the poster of earth from outer space that was on the wall. He was on a hair-trigger the rest of the day. The docs gave us some infant Tylenol but didn’t tell us the right dosage. The box said ‘for infants under 12 lbs talk to a doctor for dosage', but by the time we were going to give him the medicine it was 7 pm and all we got was the answering service. We made some calls to our friends with babies network and got an idea about the right amount.

By Thursday he was starting to feel better and today is back to being his charming self. He also didn’t poo during his 2 day illness (which didn’t help his disposition), but today he made up for it. The little lad is a giver.

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