Fever Baby

Josiah has been sick for more than a week now, started with flu and cough. It was so bad, with him crying and unable to sleep last Monday night, that we had to bring him to those 24 hour clinic, and they loaded him with big bottles of medicine. A week later he still wasn’t doing any better, in fact exactly one week after, he started to get pretty high fever at 39 degrees. This is probably the worst he got it, as he was not only hot but he was coughing and couldn’t breath well when nursing. Thus, started my many sleepless nights. Last Sunday night, he somehow didn’t want to sleep in his bed, but wants to be carried downstairs, so I brought him downstairs and he wanted to just lie on top of me and sleep that way. That time it was like 2am in the morning. By 3am, my body ached so much I had to try to carry him up, but once he reached the room, he started wailing again, that I had to quickly bring him down. Thank God for sofa beds, we managed to sleep till 9am in the morning on the sofa bed in the living room.

We gave him paracetamol, so his fever left, but after 6 hours it would come back again. And that happened for the last 3 days, this morning being the 4th day, and he still has the fever. We went to Genting on Monday and Monday night he slept really well in the hotel, but last night was another ordeal. Once we reached home, he started crying again, and he wouldn’t even let us take off his shirt that he had been wearing. He wouldn’t take the medicine this time. So he sat on me and nursed like little koala bear until he couldn’t take it anymore and fell asleep at 9pm. Well, I sneakily used the syringe and drip the medicine into his mouth while he was asleep. So the fever went down for the night. I managed to put him to bed, but by 12am he was awake and crying to be brought downstairs again. So again, we slept on the sofa bed. By 5am he awoke and asked to go up to the room. There he slept till 8am. Of course, he kept awakening throughout the night for nursing and went back to sleep. He held me so close like a bear, I did not even manage to wash my teeth that night!

We felt so inexperienced in handling his fever this time, maybe coz he really seldom got sick. I’ve heard of stories of other parents staying up ALL night looking after their sick child, my colleague once stayed by the son’s bedside praying ALL night. I now really know what that means, and how hard that really is. It is so hard to watch your child suffer like that, when he cannot tell you verbally how he is feeling except just cry. It is just heartbreaking. Furthermore, Josiah hasn’t eaten much for the last whole week. Whatever he did eat, he would vomit out soon after. No wonder the Chinese believe you don’t have to feed a sick kid. I still try to feed him though, but yesterday was the hardest as he refused everything, even his favourite food he would push away.

Experienced parents out there, what else can we do to relief his discomfort and to eliminate the fever. I know fever for more than 3 days is really dangerous, that is why we are getting so anxious.