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Thursday, November 29, 2007

Roseola

My son has had his first illness.

Tuesday night he felt warm so we took his temp... 102.5 (under arm) we were a little worried, but not panicked.... he's been teething pretty badly and we know that a mild fever can be associated with teething.... so after giving him some Tylenol, I went online to see how high a teething temp should go and found that it is usually not above 101.... so I went to my parenting group for advice and they all said that he was probably fighting a virus, give him lots of love and plenty of fluids to keep him well hydrated... I called my grandmother to see what insights she had and was reassured.... so we tried to go to bed.... tried being the opportune word here.... we finally managed to get our screaming, miserable child to sleep around 2am and he slept fitfully for about a half hour before waking up to nurse, falling asleep nursing and repeating the process... around 5am my husband got up with the baby to let me get a little sleep, but as any parent out there knows, it's kind of hard to sleep with a sick baby in the house.... around 8am I got up to relieve my husband from babywatch and he tried to get some sleep but had the same problem I did, so I dressed my son and put him in the wrap and we went for a walk... he fell asleep and slept for about an hour and a half, and so did my husband...

At this point, I was pretty sure that his temp was from some sort of illness, so when he woke up we gave him a bath, which usually calms him down, but did not this time... we took his temp again 103.6 (under arm)... going up! we called the doc and explained the situation and they said to bring him in.... off we go... Doc looked him over and said that besides the fever which was pretty high he had no other symptoms that would warrant the usual suspects (Flu, Meningitis, ear infection...etc) so he said it was Roseola and that we should expect his high fever to break Friday night or so at which time he will develop a rash and start to feel better.... he said there isn't anything we can do about this very common childhood illness except to try to keep his fever down and to keep him comfortable and well hydrated.... he told us to administer Tylenol if the fever went over 103 and if it didn't come down to administer Ibuprofen... so we went home and gave him the usual dose of Tylenol around 2:30pm (I say usual dose because we read the dosing instructions on the bottle for his weight and it said to give him a half dropper full... which we later found out was an insufficient dose)....

For the next few hours he slept in the wrap, nursed, slept in my arms, nursed.... and seemed to get hotter and hotter and more and more lethargic, so we took his temp again and found it was 104.6 (under arm)! My husband called our home teacher at around 6pm, because we had no Ibuprofen... our home teacher rushed to the store and got some for us, rushed over to our house and helped my husband to give our son a blessing and urged us to take our son to the ER.... we called the doc's office and he said to take him in so we took his temp again 104.3(under arm) and went to the ER....

At the ER they took his temp again and it was 104.9 (rectal).... they flipped out and ran to get some Tylenol and Motrin and gave him both.... within 45 minutes his temp was down to 101.5 (rectal) and holding... he had regained his usual cheerful disposition and was playing happily....they told us that the amount of Tylenol we were giving him was the recommended dose for a three month old and that he should get 1 1/2 droppers full...as I said earlier, we were following the dosing chart on the side of the Tylenol bottle... that is why we could not get his temp down so they gave us a crash course in infant pharmacology for fevers, a prescription for Tylenol and Motrin (to be administered, Motrin - wait 5 hours - Tylenol - wait 3 hours - repeat) and sent us home....

He played happily on the floor the rest of the evening... we went to bed and slept till around 1am, when he woke up and was completely inconsolable... we gave him some Motrin, danced around till around 3 and went back to bed.... Today he is normal, we have not given him any medicine since the Motrin at 1am and he seems happy, though wanting to nurse more frequently...

I am glad that we learned a few things, and didn't hurt our son too much in the process... but most of all I am glad that our son is starting to feel better...

1 comment:

The Miller's said...

How scary! So glad he's all better

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