So it’s been several days since Laelia has eaten anything substantial. We’ve managed to get quite a bit of milk, a tiny bit of Pedialyte (the juice for sick kids) and two bites here or there of baby food into her but that’s it. She not only refuses to eat anything, but she says several things rhyming with “NO!” then shakes her head. (My favorite is “GOW!”) She also spits food out and then starts coughing. She can’t breathe and close her mouth at the same time so I think that just makes food even less desirable for her. Although I did force feed her last night because I was worried; that just made us both miserable.

So of course her pediatrician is not in over the new year and we waited this long to call. And the emergency number led us to the nurse who talked us out of taking her to the emergency room. “I think it’s just a bad cold which caused tummy aches due to mucus, complicated by teething, but you’d be better off waiting until the doctor is in tomorrow than to put her through the emergency room.”

But she sounds like an old man with that cough and she barely keeps her head up!

Aw the joys of parenting. But this morning she seemed a bit better. She hasn’t slept really well lately, but after our battle last night with food, she did sleep until the morning. I think the hunger was keeping her up. Charley was able to get some spaghetti with sauce down her this afternoon (healthy I know, but at least it was heavy in calories).

So now that I’ve said all that, I’m going to come across as a terrible, uncaring mother when I say that a sick Lali is an ADORABLE Lali. She cuddles with me instead of exploring her world like the willful child she is. She rests her head against my chest and sings me a little song in the weakest voice while I rock her and kiss the top of her head. This sickness has made her darn right snuggly! And I’m trying not to love every minute of it!

So except for the not eating part (a fear of mine dating back to several nightmares of starving babies), and the nose running, we’ve been enjoying our mellow, quiet, snuggly baby. And she’s stolen my pillow (as seen above) as her comfort pillow and covered in enough germs that I haven’t tried to take it back yet. Add that to the fact that we haven’t been stretching her because she’s so sick and at least there’s something good in this for her too.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 1st, 2009 at 4:55 pm and is filed under sick. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.