Sick

Healthwise, we've been extremely blessed with the girls.

We've made it to eight months, almost nine, without the girls getting sick. Except for the ever present sniffles, and Katherine's pink eye, we've been blessed.

This weekend, therefore, we were due.

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On Saturday night, we put Caroline down to sleep, but she woke up around 10 p.m. crying and fussing.

When we picked her up, she was warm -- very warm.

Still, we weren't too concerned. It's been warm over the weekend, and we thought maybe we just needed to get her out of her winter pajamas.

But then we took her temperature.

It read 101 degrees.

I had no idea what that meant for a baby. Was that high? Low? I had read the baby books about fevers and illnesses before the babies were born, but now in the (literally) heat of the moment, I was drawing a blank.

However, I know how I feel when I have a 101 degree fever, and so I reacted like any reasonable first time Dad would.

I panicked.

Luckily, Terri kept her calm, and was a bit more knowledgable than me. She took Caroline out of some of her winter layers, gave her some Baby Tylenol, and fed her a bottle.

Within an hour, her temperature had dropped to about 99 degrees.

We put her back to bed, and watched her closely through the night, but she slept fine.

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The next morning, she seemed her normal self. Her temperature was back down to 98.7.

But then later that morning, while visiting our friends Laurel and Grant at their home, Caroline to seemed very, very warm again.

I thought, we need to leave, NOW!

We took her temperature again -- back to 101 degrees.

We gave our apologies to our friends, and started to pack up for home.

Laurel and Grant, who have a son a few years older than the girls, were able to give us reassurances as we headed out the door.

"You know, 101 degrees is different for babies than it is for adults," said Grant. "They can get up to 105 before you call the doctor. If one of us gets to 105, you're calling a coroner."

I was reassured by their advise, but we nonetheless gave our apologies once more for our quick exit, and headed home.

Once home, we gave Caroline some milk, and let her rest.

She definitely wasn't her normal self. Rather than crawling around and playing, she spent a good part of the afternoon in Mommy or Daddy's arm, dozing.

Caroline even sat quietly on the couch with Daddy, finally falling asleep.

Caroline napping with Daddy on the couch.
(click on photo for larger view)

At 3 pm, when she woke up from her nap with Daddy, her temperature was up to 103.

Was it the fact that she had laid next to Daddy's warm body that had risen her temperature, or was her fever going up?

We called the doctor. "Give her fluids," they said, "and call us if she gets to 105."

(Our friend Grant should open his own advice line!)

By 3:3 pm, her temperature was back down to 101.

By 4:00 pm, she was crawling around laughing and playing.

By this evening, she was cool again, and acting pretty normal.

Terri, as usual, stayed calm throughout, and handled everything very well.

David, on the other hand, is going to need several weeks to recover from the stress of having his first baby fever!