Sick Baby

Lydia has her first cold. She is stuffy and sniffily. Her tiny little nose is red and drippy. It is all around a mommy nightmare. She is too little to know how to blow her nose and doesn't quite understand that the weird blue rubber bulb will help her breathe. The first sleepless night I thought it was teething. I figured she sounded stuffy because she was crying. Her little mouth open and her tongue thrusting against her gums. The next morning she was still stuffy. Later that night she was still stuffy and the next morning...you guessed it still stuffy. So we took her to the doctor's. I  was hoping for solutions. I was hoping for suggestions. I got nothing.

We saw one of the pediatrician we had never met before. She came in. She checked Lydia's ears, eyes, and throat. She listened to her chest. She then said well she has a cold. Bring her back if she gets a high fever or she is still sick next week. I am thinking she is insane, is she is still sick next week I may call ....turns out I don't really know any famous doctors except Louis Pasteur and that won't help me. So I am waiting. She goes to leave the room. I ask her about over the counter meds and she says it can't hurt. And she leaves.

We leave the office. I look at Eliot, who had asked if we could take her to her swim lesson apparently not looking at the appalling glare on my face (she was not going to swimming), and said, I didn't like her. He smiled at me. My ranting begins: She did nothing! She is just going to let my baby not breath! What sort of doctor does this!? Why go to medical school if you don't have any thing helpful to share!? I could have gotten the same free advice from the  tenth grade twerp that bags my groceries. Then tears start rolling down my face, partly from the fact that I have worked myself all up, partly from the guilt of getting her sick since I waited too long to get on antibiotics and partly from the fact that since Lydia can't breath she hasn't been able to nurse. For the rest of the evening we address the doctor as the evil lady that didn't want my baby to breath.

We went to Target and picked up every over the counter thing that I could think of: baby Vicks, Vicks plug ins, infant Advil, infant chamomile lotion, infant Tylenol, a new filter for Puff (her elephant shaped humidifier) and a blow up mattress in case one of us needed to sleep in her room since it has the humidifier. Thank goodness for Eliot that is willing to be strong enough for both of us and hold her down to extract the boogers with that bulb thing. He has also been voted to be the saline nose dropper. I am the giver of Tylenol and rubber of baby Vicks (which I have decided is brilliant!). With diligence and patience (a perhaps a drop of humor) Lydia slept peacefully and restfully through the night, hopefully she is on the mend! I fell asleep thinking: It's only a cold. It's only a cold. It's only a cold.