Illness, Spots & New Habits

A few days after getting home from our Mackinac Island trip, we could tell Em was not quite acting like herself. At first, we thought it was trying to "re-adjust" to our normal schedule of eating, sleeping, and playing. The sleeping part was especially difficult. Em would wake up screaming in the middle of the night and then continue to stay up for several hours. This quickly turned into the added fun of middle of the night vomiting. After a couple of nights like this, we took Em in to see her doctor. We couldn't get in to see her regular pediatrician, so she saw one of the other doctor's who diagnosed her with an ear infection and prescribed an antibiotic. No big surprise since Em has had several ear infections. Usually 24 hours after being on an antibiotic, Em is just about back to her old self. Not this time. The second day after taking the antibiotic coincided with an evening out we had planned while my mom watched Em and, later that night, the big storms that came through our area. We didn't think too much about keeping our plans since during the day Emerson seemed to play good and (again) we figured after another dose of the antibiotic, she'd be even better.

So off we went.... A couple of hours later, my mom called and asked about giving Em some Tylenol because she was feeling warm. No problem we thought. However, to our great surprise when we got home another hour later (trying to beat the storm before getting drenched), Em was so hot. We couldn't get a real good temperature reading, but under arm was somewhere around 104. Yikes! She wasn't sleeping, but instead was just lying on the couch. It's just not normal to see Em lying still. Poor little thing looked so sad. Of course, we immediately called her pediatrician while the storm was really acting up. Surprisingly they said this can be typical for an infection and can take up to 3 days for the antibiotic to "kick in" and as long as she was taking in fluids, they were not concerned. Thankfully, we didn't need to have to go out into the storm in the middle of the night to take Em to the hospital. So, we ended up taking Em up to bed with us and set the alarm for every 4 hours so we could keep her on a Tylenol schedule to keep her fever under control as much as possible. Needless to say, we hardly got any sleep all night.

The next day (3 days on antibiotic) wasn't too much better, a few moments of good playing, but poor eating and another night of almost no sleep.... again we let Em "sleep" in our bed. Day 4 wasn't much better and I noticed a few tiny spots on Em's forehead, which I thought could have been heat rush since the day before we had spent some time out in the sun and it was one of the hotter/humid days of summer. Throughout the day, it seemed to spread and was visible on her back, chest and belly. The next day (Day 5) we took Em in to see her pediatrician again since she just didn't seem to be improving. Her doctor didn't think the original ear infection diagnosis was correct and thought instead she had a viral infection that had been circulating. This explained the little effect the antibiotic seemed to have, the prolonged fever, and rash. Finally an answer, but unfortunately it didn't offer much relief because this is something that just has to run its course. We had a few move days of (about a full week now) crankiness, poor appetite, and very little sleeping before Em finally started to act like herself and the spots finally faded.

Unfortunately, over the course of the next week we continued to struggle with sleeping -- Em would NOT lie down in her crib for naps or for the night. So, we continued to let her sleep on the couch for naps and fall asleep on the couch at bedtime before laying her in her crib. And, without fail, every night Em would pop up screaming. The only thing that seemed to calm her down was letting her sleep in our bed. After 2 (almost 2 1/2) weeks of pure exhaustion, we decided we had to put an end to these new "habits" that Em had developed or we would not survive for much longer. The next weekend, we were determined to stick to our guns and help Em re-establish the great sleeping habits she had pre-Mackinac that we longed to get back. One of the deciding factors that we had to make a change was also when I asked Emerson if she was ready for bed and where she went to go to sleep and her "response" was pointing to the couch! I told her that was not her bed and she started to fuss and "insisted" that was her bed by continuing to point to it. This was clearly not a good sign, we had to make a change and supposedly habits can be made/broken after 3 days.

Here's how it went:

Day 1, Nap 1 - 45 minutes of crying before she finally fell. For the first time in almost 3 weeks, Emerson finally slept in her crib. It felt like a miracle.

Day 1, Bedtime - 30 minutes of crying before falling asleep. We wondered if she would actually make it through the night. The result.... one 15 minute cry during the night and she put herself back to sleep. Wake up was around 6 a.m. Overall, we considered it a successful night.

Day 2, Nap 1 - 1 hour crying... no luck with this nap, so we gave up.

Day 2, Nap 2 - 15 minutes of crying before sleeping

Day 2, Bedtime - 5 minutes of crying. No mid night crying. Wake up at 6 a.m. Success!!!

Day 3, Nap 1 - no crying

Day 3, Bedtime - 1 hour crying. What? We were making such good progress. I gave in and cuddled Em and rocked her for a while before putting her down again. I think we had another 15-20 minutes of crying before she finally gave in. And then the worst night hit, she was awake from about 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. (at least this was the last time I looked at the clock). It was horrible. She would cry intermittently over the course of these 2 hours. We kept thinking that she had fallen asleep and then we would hear her again, but just as we thought to get her, she would stop and then the cycle would continue again. It was a miserable Monday at work. We were all exhausted.

The next few days, Em continued to struggle with going to bed, but we stuck with our routine and she would cry between 5-20 minutes. 4 days later (sometime over 3 weeks since Mackinac) I would say we were FINALLY back to normal with Em going to bed really good and staying asleep all night. Whew! It was a VERY long 3+ weeks before we got our happy baby back!