Rough Times

The lack of blog entries lately is due to unusual suffering here at our house the last few weeks. Two weeks ago, Doug started feeling sick, and had a cold that took him out of commission for the weekend. By Saturday night, my throat started hurting, and I assumed I was getting the same thing. But my sore throat never gave way to a cold, it just kept on hurting. On Tuesday I went to urgent care and was diagnosed with probably strep -- they gave me antibiotics and promised I would feel much better in 36 hours. While I was talking to the doctor, I passed out (oops), due to dehydration -- it's really hard to eat or drink when your throat hurts so much! So I called Doug to see if he could drive me home, only to discover that he had arrived home from work while I was gone and was in bed with a fever! Ugh. We slogged through the next two days, waiting for my antibiotics to kick in, but to no avail. By Thursday night I was in agony and having trouble breathing through my swollen throat, so back to urgent care I went (and thanks to Erin, who came and took Ian out to dinner so that Doug could rest during this time!!). They changed my diagnosis to mono, to my great dismay, as there is little treatment and a long recovery time (variable from 2 weeks to 2 months). Fortunately my father volunteered to drive down for the week to help out with Ian. I continued to feel absolutely awful, unable to sleep, eat, or drink well, until going back to urgent care for a third time Wednesday -- the doctor took one look at my throat, declared them to be the worst looking tonsils he had ever seen, and promptly injected me with steroids and painkillers (also did the definitive blood test for mono - I've got it!). I was feeling much better within the hour! Now why didn't they do that when I was in the week before?

So we made it through the week with a lot of help from Grandpa. Doug is still feeling less than perfect but is more or less back to normal, but Grandpa sadly now has a cold! Fortunately Uncle Greg will be arriving back in Durham tonight and staying for a least a few months (doing another building project locally). I feel much better, though still tired, but am trying to restrain myself and get lots of rest today in preparation for returning to work on Monday.

Ian has had to put up with somewhat decreased availability and energy from Mommy, but has had a good time playing with Grandpa. The biggest change for him was that I decided to try to wean him cold-turkey before starting the course of steroids and narcotics at home yesterday (although these are surprisingly both considered safe for nursing, I'd rather spare him the exposure since he doesn't need them himself). After some research online about people's experiences weaning toddlers who are still dedicated nursers like Ian, I concluded that using lemon juice to make nursing unappealing seemed to be the most successful and least traumatic method. Any approach that involves the mother refusing to let the child nurse seems to be slow and traumatic on both sides. Lemon juice seems to work well because it ends up being the child's choice, in a way, not to nurse, and mom and kid stay on the same team. So I tried it last night when Ian arrived home for the day. We told him that "nana" was yucky because Mommy was taking medicine. He tried it a couple of times and made a very sour face. I made a sour face back and him and said "Ick!". He thought this was hilarious, and laughed and laughed when I continued to say it -- not at all the reaction we were expecting! He asked to nurse several times throughout the evening, but when I reminded him is was yucky he mostly didn't even try it and just laughed a little. Before bed he spent a long time snuggling with Daddy and his babies (something that he is usually too wiggly to do for more than 20 seconds), which we took as a good sign that he is using other methods of comfort to substitute for nursing (and fun for Daddy, who has always wanted more hugs). This morning, the time of day when nursing is most important to him, was clearly a little tough for him. He remembered that nana was yucky but was definitely sad about it. We got through the hours before he went to see Maeve and Lisa (his nanny) by doing some of his very favorite things: 1) Playing in the back yard (in the dark!) with his new dump truck and "rocks!" from 5am-6am, 2) Skyping with Grandma, 3) Playing with water in the sink, then the bathtub, 4) Playing with Legos, his new favorite indoor toy. By the time he gets home today, it will have been 24 hours with no nursing, so it seems that he is probably weaned!

We haven't taken any photos or videos while we've been sick, as taking care of ourselves and Ian has been all we could handle, but here are some pictures of him snuggling his babies (in Zrbrt's bed) from a few weeks ago: