Illness update

Well, we all survived the night.

Isaac was still hot and sweaty when we checked on him at midnight, but he had cooled off by 5:30 a.m. when Craig got up to go to work. This morning his temperature was fine, but he still seemed emotionally fragile -- things upset him easily, and he wanted a lot of hugs.

He was also very tired, despite having slept nearly 11 hours. After he yawned several times, he told me, "Isaac didn't get enough sleep. Need a little nap." He was fairly playful despite his neediness, and so we played outside and ran a few errands. He continued to feel sleepy, though, and by the time he declined lunch altogether he felt hot to the touch. When I took his temperature it was higher than last night -- 101.3 degrees. After some baby Tylenol, a cup of apple cider, and some nursing, he fell right asleep. He's still napping now.

Earlier this morning I managed to get a look in his mouth, and he's about to cut one of his upper molars. The site is bright red and swollen, and looks quite sore. That side of his throat is also reddened, and right before he clamped his jaws shut I thought I saw some little white spots. One way or the other, that explains the lack of appetite.

I called our pediatrician's office and spoke to an advice nurse, and she wasn't concerned. She thought the fever pattern indicated some type of viral infection -- increasing toward evening, highest in the middle of the night, low in the morning, with another spike around midday -- but their office waits for a kid to have a fever for 72 hours before examining him. So unless he begins refusing liquids, becomes very ill, or grows listless, they don't want to see him yet.

The nurse echoed the advice we read last night in Dr. Sears's Baby Book -- with fever it's the behavior rather than the number that matters. A kid with a fever of 105 who can sit up and chat with his mother simply isn't as sick as a kid with a fever of 102 who is slumped over and can't even recognize her face.