Poorly baby
This past week my husband and I have had our first taste of caring for a poorly baby. And I have to say that it isn’t much fun. Oscar has been congested since birth and we have grown used to his grunts and snuffles. But the addition of the most pitiful sounding little coughs that have developed this week thanks to a cold has made it so much worse.
It isn’t that Oscar has become more demanding, in fact if anything he has been less so as it seems to have wiped his energy, making him sleep for much longer periods than he has ever done. Three to four hour stretches both day and night have suddenly become the norm for us, rather than the hourly and two-hourly awakenings he used to experience.
No, the hardest part is knowing how rough he must be feeling and not being able to do much about it. I know how horrid colds make me feel and yet I can blow my nose and drink hot lemon with honey or take some cold remedy to help me deal with the symptoms. This isn’t so for a two-month-old who is only allowed the smallest dose of Calpol and lots of hugs.
The whole situation isn’t made any easier by the fact that he had his first set of vaccinations yesterday. Thankfully his temperature has remained low, although slightly higher than usual for him, and as he is sleeping lots at the moment he seems to be coping pretty well after his injections. I can’t say the same for myself though!
I had arranged for my husband to accompany me to the doctors so that he could be there to help with this first set of jabs. So, after we had seen the doctor for my post-natal check, we went into the nurse’s room and I braced myself for the screaming I expected to come.
Oscar isn’t really a crier. He is a very noisy baby and makes himself known by all manner of sounds, but he rarely cries or screams. We always know when something is really wrong with him because suddenly the intensity of his noises increases. But even so he is usually consolable with a hug and a kiss. My boy does love to be held.
I think the only time he has been really, truly inconsolable was last weekend in the lead up to his cold. I can only assume that he was feeling pretty darn sorry for himself at that point, because the following day he was much snottier but easier to soothe. And I expected the same kind of response when he was jabbed by those needles.
But, surprisingly, he coped really well with them. Even the nurse commented on how quickly he calmed down. That’s not to say that it wasn’t horrible watching his face screw up with shock and pain as each one went in, especially after the trusting look he gave me when I held him after the first injection and he obviously thought it was all over! But he did recover quickly, simply whimpering every so often and then falling asleep before we even reached the car.
So I think it really is a case of mummy worrying much more than she needs to. Despite being glad he is sleeping much better and getting the rest he so obviously needs, I am missing those moments when he is so awake and alert. He is usually one of the nosiest babies I have ever met, twisting his neck as far as it will go to see all that is going on around him and completely ignoring me even when two seconds previously he had been begging for a feed.
And he is really starting to interact with people now, watching them as they talk to him and trying his hardest to copy their facial expressions. But since yesterday he hasn’t really been as alert and so I know he isn’t feeling quite right. And that is hard.
One of my friends, who is much older than me and so has been through this journey of parenthood already, said to me yesterday that parenting will be one of the hardest and yet most enjoyable roles I will ever play. And she is right. I am loving pretty much every minute. I would say I’m enjoying every single moment but it would be a lie as I’m not quite so enthusiastic about all the middle of the night wake-up calls I get! But it is hard nonetheless.
Having a baby is, as another friend mentioned, like carrying your heart outside of your body. You want to treasure it and keep it safe from everything, but you can’t.
Things are going to happen and sometimes you have to face the less pleasant experiences to prevent something worse happening. I hated having to take my baby for his vaccinations, but I knew that I ultimately wanted to give my child protection from those things the vaccinations are made to offer him immunity to.
And I know that this cold is the first of so very many that Oscar will come into contact with through his life. It is a part of growing up and I can accept that helping him cope with it all will be a major part of this parenting journey. But it doesn’t mean I have to like it.
See also:
Comments