Thomas has a chest infection...

Poor old Thomas - for (I suppose) the last week, as I've been going in to collect him from his bedroom early in the morning, instead of leaping up out of bed yelling "Oh it's YOU Daddy! Let's go DOWNSTAIRS!!!" he's been all curled up in his blankets and has lifted his head up just a little bit and (in his best quiet moany voice) muttered "I'm not wewwy well daaddy, I need one-nice-green-leaf" *massive pout*... :( So we've come downstairs, I've taken his temperature (which was typically a little up, but not terrible) humored him by plucking him a nice fresh basil leaf from the plant in the kitchen (it's a very hungry caterpillar thing)...

...perhaps given him a little dose of paracetamol suspension or nurofen, watched his temperature trickle back to normal(ish) and just got on with things. This was until 2 days ago when he started to go off his food and drink, developed a nasty cough and (most worryingly) started complaining that it felt "Spicy" when he needed to use the potty for a number one...when we checked his temperature after this it was shockingly just below 40 degrees! So (because of the hour) we had to go back to our favorite place! Yay! :(

Thomas, after spending an hour an a half laying on our coats on the floor in the *boiling* temperatures (just in his nappy) of the Children's emergency unit - in all that time provided with just two small glasses of warm water between the four of us - we were finally allocated a bed, at which point all the nurses suddenly panicked that Thomas should be drinking 5 mil of water every five minutes(!) and was far too hot...so we just carried on what we had been doing all along - offering him drinks which he refused, wetting his skin and using books to waft cool air over him and after around 40 minutes we were transferred to the (much cooler) Outwood ward where we were showered with drinks (including tea and coffee for Flyingpops and I) and Thomas even got given jam on toast!

We saw a doctor fairly quickly, but not before Thomas had discovered (and had to be yanked away from) a blu-ray player, a Nintendo Wii, a PS2 (with all their interesting disks inside various cupboards), a sea-plane, the doctors sink and taps, some Duplo that stuck to the wall, some fold out screens and a box of (lolly stick) medical tongue depressors (that Daddy had to tidy back up again)...and after nearly 3 hours were told he *probably* had an infection (swollen tonsils and "up" glands) and were sent home to keep an eye on him and monitor his temperature (which we had been doing all along anyway)...it was just past midnight when we all crawled into bed (more dehydrated and stressed than we had been to start with, and equally worried)...

The next day (thankfully) his temperature was completely normal in the morning, but he was still very chesty and obviously off his food and drink, he barely ate any breakfast or lunch (apart from ice cream that he was allowed due to his swollen tonsils)-

-but after missing his lunchtime nap his temperature was back at 39 degrees! Rather than go back to the hospital Flyingpops thought she would (on the off-chance) try out our new doctors, called them up, was answered right away and was offered an appointment in 15 minutes time, meaning we all had to rush back out to the car and up to the surgery!

Anyway, suffice it to say it took the new doctor all of 2 minutes to diagnose a chest infection and prescribe some Amoxicillin suspension (after two doses of which Thomas has been back to his usual self - apart from the ice cream dinners)...if only we could have gone there in the first place!

Baby Thomas has a chest infection

Poor Thomas...you know, I've been rinsing and repeating the same little joke about this for a while now (to knowing nods and chuckles from some, and shocked exclaimations from others non-parents) - "Thomas doesn't 'come down' with anything as such, he just seems to have the occasional week off being poorly" - and I'm not exaggerating, if it's not a few days with an upset tummy (with unwanted ejections from one end or the other), it's going to be the opposite issue - huge effort getting anything to come out with a lot of huffing, puffing and pouting, or it's some sort of respiratory issue - a nasty cough, or bouts of sneezing/a runny nose, maybe a bit of a temperature - the point is, despite all the great work Flyingpops has done and is continuing to do priming his system with all those antibodies from the breast milk the simple fact remains - babies get poorly - they are new to the world, and every single bug out there understandably wants it's shot (which of course it deserves) especially as babies spend a large amount of time sharing largely unwashed suckable objects (which includes pretty much everything) in communal spaces (usually with lots of other babies)...

Unfortunately, this (discovered) inevitability, twinned with my own conscious wish *never* to become/or even be seen as one of "those parents" who fret and worry and pamper, then whisk their fragile bundle off (wrapped in cotton wool) to the doctors at the slightest spot or wheeze has probably meant that poor Thomas has been struggling bravely on with a nasty chest infection for over a week (maybe even longer)...Flyingpops finally gave up on my insistence that he was *fine* and took him to the doctors on Monday where he got his diagnosis and his first tiny prescription of liquid antibiotics (which he greatly dislikes and thus has to be smuggled into his mouth mixed with food)...the doctor did actually say, had we taken him in much beforehand we would probably have been sent away to try him on a bit of baby nurofen to see if he got over it, but you can't help feeling a little guilty for assuming he had only "got another little cough" only to find it was something slightly more serious... :S