It's back...

Well we thought Parker was over his ear infection but apparently not. He was fine this morning (except that I thought he felt hot...although I FREQUENTLY think he feels hot and he has only actually had a fever 2 times before this current time). Then when he was eating lunch, he threw a huge fit and didn't want to eat his veggies which is very unlike him! He is kind of strange about what he likes to eat and typically eats more veggies than a full grown man would eat (literally!), so I thought it was odd that he didn't want to eat them. I felt his head again and it still felt really hot to me so I decided to go ahead and take his temp. It was 101.4 (they want you to be seen in the pediatrician's office for anything over 101). I called and got him an appointment. They had an appointment just an hour later so we took it. I finished trying to get Parker to eat and he all of sudden ended up eating some bread, cheese, crackers and even ate some of his veggies that he had fought so hard earlier to not eat. I was starting to feel kind of foolish for calling and making him an appointment to get seen but I figured that since he had just recently had an ear infection where his main symptom was his fever, I should probably take him in just to make sure that everything was alright. When we got to the pediatrician's office, his fever was only 99.8 which made me feel even more foolish for taking him in. Dr. Duff came in and checked his ears. At first he said that it looked like the ear infection had cleared up nicely and was completely healed...then he all of a sudden said, "wait a minute...let me look one more time. I'm not sure if I'm seeing the end of the ear canal or if there is a bit of infection still left way deep down in the ear canal." Sure enough he said that there was just a "tiny rim of infection left at the very back of the ear canal". This meant that Parker had to be put on antibiotics once again to treat the ear infection. :(

Parker took a nap on the way from Manhattan back to Wamego but woke up as soon as we got home which really surprised me b/c he had been acting really tired. I changed his diaper and then took his temp b/c he felt really hot to me again. I'm sure glad I took his temp b/c with it being so low at the pediatrician's office, I figured he wouldn't need Tylenol to keep the fever in check. His fever was 102.4! I gave him Tylenol, turned on the AC, turned his fan on and faced it toward his crib, rocked him for a little bit and put him in his crib for a nap. He took his usual 1 1/2 hour nap which was nice but was pretty grumpy when he woke up. Luckily his fever had gone down by this point and was only 98.6. His appetite was not quite as hearty as when he feels well but he still ate quite a bit. When 6:15 rolled around we realized that it had been 4 hours since Parker had had Tylenol so we took his temp to see if we should give him more. His fever was 102.8...not good! :( We gave him Tylenol, he played for a little while and then we took him up to give him a bath and put him to bed. We was pointing at the tub while saying "bubble, bubble!" and seemed excited like usual to take a bath. Once the tub was filled and I stripped him down to put him in the tub, he just clutched and hugged me like he was holding on for dear life. He had definitely decided that he did NOT want to take a bath! Poor little guy did the same thing when he was sick with the flu so we were pretty certain that he was really feeling yucky! We were certainly not going to make our sick baby take a bath, so we got him dressed for bed, I nursed him and he went right to sleep. Before I nursed him, we took his temp again b/c we realized it had been an hour since he had had his Tylenol and we wanted to make sure his temp was going down since it had been so high earlier. It was 102.5. We were surprised at how little the temp had gone down in an hour and thought that Tylenol was supposed to work faster than that. While I was nursing Parker, James did some research and found out that you don't need to worry about a kid Parker's ages' temperature unless it is over 104. This actually made me feel a little better b/c I thought that maybe 103 would be the cut-off of when you would need to take your child to the ER for a fever which would have been really close to how high Parker's fever was at its highest! I find it interesting that Parker can go 14 months before getting his first ear infection and now it's just a couple of weeks after he got the first ear infection and now he either has a new one just starting or the former one is just still here. Anyway, he's sleeping peacefully right now so we're hoping and praying that he'll start feeling better really soon!! I would rather this any day than the flu, but that doesn't make it any easier to see your baby sick!