My very happy SICK baby.

As I think of the bits that make up my life these days, I look at my son, sleeping in his crib, with his body wedged between his pillow and the bars, his blanket pulled half way over his head and the peaceful look on his face. I love him. I love him so much that when I realized that the small little rash that was on his foot Friday had spread to both feet and legs up to his knees and then developed sores in his mouth that look like tiny blisters, I cried. More like bawled! A gross, snotty, slobbery, blubbering cry. Why? Because from all the research I did, my best educated guess is that this is Hand, Food, and Mouth Disease. The only place he could have picked it up is from the homeday care he JUST started this past week. I felt like a terrible mother.

He is such a happy little guy that I didn't even realize he wasn't feeling well until his aunt (my sister) sat with him on the couch and he fell asleep against her. My 1 year old son does NOT cuddle. Heck, half the time he doesn't even like being held. Once he woke up I offered him milk, he greadily took it from my hands, went to drink from the bottle, as soon as the nipple hit his tongue...bottle on the floor, baby crying. Mommys heart, breaking.

I then took a much closer look at the rash, in his mouth and over every other inch of his body. My poor baby then became very fussy and warm to the touch. I brought him home, struggled to get about 6oz of pedialite in him, and off to bed. He was so exhausted! An hour later, awake. Screaming! Nothing I did helped, he just wanted me to hold him and let him fuss and cry. An hour or so later he finally fell asleep in my arms and I brought him into my bed so I could make sure he didn't stop breathing through the night, not that I thought he actually would, but I worry about things like that when he's sick. Which also means I didn't sleep much last night.

I'll be taking him to see his pediatrician tomorrow just to confirm my self-diagnosis. Also, to get a doctors note for my bosses. I nanny preemie twins and there is NO WAY I'll be showing up potentailly carrying this painful disease. I was planning on giving notice any way, I need a higher paying job and an agency took me on last week. So taking this week off work would free me up to go on interviews anyway.

I just feel awful about the little man. On Friday we went to see an ENT because he's had 4 ear infections in less than 6 months. He's scheduled for surgery next month. He'll get very small tubes put in his ears. The ENT looked in his ears and told me there is a lot of scarring in his left ear, the one that had all the infections, and chronic fluid in his right ear with minimal scaring. He feels tubes will help keep my son's ears clear during this very important period in his language development. The tubes should only last 6 to 9 months.