I need a money tree

Last night was rough. Mr. Hot Potato thought he needed to sleep attached to my boob All.Night.Long. Stinker. This morning he woke up with a fever of 101 and about 30 minutes later it was up to 103 so I gave him some tylenol and headed out to find an urgent care open on Sundays.

We ended up going to the one we went to on Weds and this time they believed me when I said he was sick and burning up. They didn't open until 11 so we ended up waiting for an hour in the car. By the time we were seen, it had been 2.5 hours since I had given him the tylenol and his fever was still at 103. So, the doctor gave us a sheet and sent us to the pediatric ER.

They did a chest x-ray and ran a catheter to check for UTI. Chest was clear, but his urine was not and after spending about 5 hours in the ER, we came home with more antibiotics. I greatly fear the bills from all of this.

In summary, after his first week at daycare, my poor little baby has come down with an ear infection, strep throat and a UTI. W.T.F.

Wits end is where I'm at

He was much better & fever-free Thurs-Friday, but his appetite hasn't come back. Then tonight he wasn't feeling good and had a 101.3 fever. I gave him some tylenol and put him to bed. I just checked on him, it's about 5 hours later and he's burning up. Fever at 101.6, so I gave him infant advil. I just don't know what else to do and "give him tylenol/advil" seems to be the advice du jour, but I just feel like he should be better now that he's had 5 days of antibiotics. I am concerned about his cough/breathing. I know it's not whooping cough, but he just sounds so congested and I feel like he doesn't seem to be able to breathe quite right.

I'm going to break the rules and go get him and let him sleep with me in my bed.

Back to work? Just kidding...

So Tuesday morning he woke up burning up. I gave him some infant advil and debated about keeping him home and taking him to the doctor as soon as they opened which wasn't until 9am. Since I have to be at work at 7, I thought I'd just take him to daycare (the advil covering the fever) and see how the day went. At about 9:30 I called the daycare to check on him and they said he wasn't feeling well at all. So I called the pediatrician and made a 10:30 appointment and left work to go pick him up. I figured this way, I still got a couple of hours in and I could get ahead of any illness and get him on antibiotics early enough to take him into daycare today. The doctor did a throat culture on him and said it came back as negative, but he had an ear infection so I got the antibiotics and we spent yesterday afternoon snoozing together in bed. All went as planned until this afternoon.

Well, the daycare called this afternoon at about 3 to tell me that he had a fever of 103 and that I needed to come get him immediately. So I called the pediatrician’s office and the nurse there says she was about to call me because his throat culture came out of the incubator positive for strep. Of course, there were no doctors in there so she said to give him some tylenol immediately and then go to an urgent care and get myself checked too because I likely have strep too. When we got to the urgent care, of course he was his usual happy self and they didn’t think anything looked wrong but I insisted they take his temp and it was still 101. They were shocked that for as sick and snotty as he is how happy he seemed. They didn’t really “see” him though but said that the antibiotics I started him on yesterday may take 48 hours or so to really kick in and to keep giving him tylenol in the meantime to keep the fever down. They looked me over and took a throat culture and gave me a prescription for some antibiotics. They said they’d call with the results of the culture on Saturday. I guess there is a quick culture which the pediatrician did yesterday that isn’t as accurate or only tests for certain strains, and the other strains take some time to check. Whatever the case may be, we’re sick, and now I have to miss even more work.

One week

One week into daycare and he comes home today with a fever and snot. Fan-fucking-tastic. We took a shower/bath and sat in the steam for awhile but his fever ended up climbing to 101.3. I'm dreading tomorrow. I gave him some infant advil and now he's out like a light. Hopefully tomorrow he's better and the daycare won't make me come get him. I need to go read their policy about fevers and such. The administrator (who drives a nice, shiny new Mercedes UGH.) told me that he had a very mild fever this afternoon, but that he seemed fine and his carer didn't think I needed to come get him. Whew. She mentioned that with a higher fever I'd have to take him to the doctor (yet another stinkin copay which makes 6 so far and it's adding up) to get a form (which the doctor charges an additional $10 to fill out) saying that he's not contagious. Whatever. For the exorbitant amount of money I pay that damn place ($1500 a month) and all their stupid policies, which clearly don't work since that's where he picked up this crud, I wish they'd cut me some slack. I don't have the time off to take yet. I haven't even been back a full pay period yet to earn some hours of leave.

And of course, my throat has started to get sore which means I soon will be fighting snot and congestion myself and since I'm bf-ing I can't take anything to help. Yay.

6 Months...where'd the time go?

I can't believe my time is up and I have to go back to work tomorrow and leave my baby in daycare. I can't even think about it anymore. UGH!

Back to my hellish 10+ hours a day job with the jerks and mean people. No transfer in sight and I can't even tell you how many hours of sleep I have lost worrying about having to work weekends and holidays with no childcare available. I don't even know what I will do. I need to find a good way to refuse without pissing my bosses off (probably not possible). But I WILL NOT go two weeks or more without a day at home with my baby. I don't know what the answer is and in this economy the job prospects aren't good. I've been looking.

Also, I'm really not looking forward to having to pump three times a day at work. I have an office, but making/finding the time is going to be difficult. Especially with the misogynistic jerks around. But then again, I guess I really don't give a crap. If I need to pump, I need to pump and I'll walk out of meetings if I have to.