Wednesday, March 21, 2012

sick babies

Sickness has a way of mowing down families. First one person, then everyone else follows like dominos.

The past seven days have been a textbook example of this. Since I work in an elementary school, I am the number one bring-er home-r of germs. Kindergartners seem to delight in sneezing in my face, throwing up while we are packed into the tight little elevator, rubbing their snotty nose on my belly as they swoop in for hugs. You'd think that I'd have built up a pretty crazy good immune system... and maybe I have, but this last bug was a bulldozer that crashed through the immunity wall.

I blame my co-worker. No kids, she's always stressed out over her job and getting things done. I walk in on Wednesday (late, as usual), and see her practically crying because she felt sick but felt bad about not coming in. I quickly pushed her out the door and assured her that I would be fine, all while trying not to breathe her airspace.

Too bad we work in a small office. 


The next day I was sick, and by Friday I couldn't get out of bed. A trip to the emergency room on Saturday produced a diagnosis of bronchitis. And then... I came home from the emergency room feeling a little better, only to find Baby S with a temperature of 102. And Toddler B quickly followed.

Sunday was a feverish, crabby nightmare. It's interesting- Baby S is not breastfeeding all too much anymore during the day, but being sick renewed her interest in it. All she wanted to do was be held and nurse. I'm glad that I could accomodate her- anything to make her feel better! There were even times when I felt like she wasn't getting anything. Maybe she wasn't, but I think the act of nursing itself made her feel better, regardless of whether she was getting any or not. It made me feel happy, too, that I was passing onto her the antibodies that my body had created to help me get rid of this bug, since maybe that would make her feel better faster.

And here we are Wednesday evening... is everyone still sick? In a word, yes. I'm at about 95%, but Baby S still needs to be held most of the time, and Toddler B had to start her own round of antibiotics. We still have a couple of hard days ahead of us.

Final thought? I'm thinking of transferring to a high school.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...