My poor ill baby

Madison fell ill!

This is not the first time she has been ill but definitely the worst!
It all started when Nancy became unwell.. and the silly girl didn't tell me that she was sick! She had been fasting and not sleeping well, going daily to a crowded mosque for Ramadan and then after one rainy day she suddenly started sneezing and I noticed she seemed rather 'off'. I asked her if she was sick and she replied 'no'. Then I said " are u feeling throat pain or have a runny nose?" AND the dreaded 'yes' came back....I could have fainted at that point!

The worst thing is that Nancy has this habit of wiping Madison's drooling face with her bare fingers despite being told to use tissue. Hence the transmission of the bug...

On the 9th Sept Madison was still her cheerful old self.. I didn't even suspect that she was brewing a bug. I even took her swimming that day! Horrors, in retrospect.. my poor baby...

That night, I put her to bed as usual and then woke at 3 AM to feed her. She seemed rather zonked out and when I picked her up she was burning hot! Her palms and soles were the first to strike me as being searing hot. I fed her, trying my very best not to panic as I reached for the thermometer. It read the dreaded 38 C. She fed and fell asleep immediately so I put her back in her cot without her swaddle.

I was absolutely shocked. And unable to go back to sleep. I tossed in bed until close to ? 4Am and by 540h she was awake and crying. I rushed to her room and picked her up, she felt so hot so I quickly fed her again in an effort to hydrate her. A repeat temperature read 37.9 C . Chris and I then fed her some paracetamol syrup. She stayed up after that for about 2 hours then I fed her again and she fell asleep at about 0700h.

The rest of the day she was grouchy and tired, and I think the highest her temperature got probably was close to 39 C. I fed her 2 hourly and regularly checked her diapers. She subsequently gagged at the paracetamol liquid and even threw up once. Her nose was running on the right side and later developed a runny sticky right eye too!

We rested her the whole day and I basically carried her in the sling either for transport or to nap. Fortunately, at the 4 PM nap after I fell asleep too, her fever broke. She was still tired but really picked up in the evening. she took another nap at 6PM for 30 minutes so she ended up sleeping late ..at 9PM! For the first time in months Chris and I had dinner at the Novena house...one good thing that came out of the entire saga.

On the 11th Sept she remained afebrile, but was cranky and still off spirit. She also developed some loose stools, and you could hear her gut grumbling away...I let her nap as she desired, as she was so upset otherwise... crying easily at the slightest thing. Her nose was running less, but was blocked instead.... She still wanted to be carried and kept accompanied the entire day.

Madison starting recovering on the 12th of Sept, but boy was she grouchy! Complaining at every little thing, unhappy about sitting around, unhappy about being in the house and she hardly smiled the entire day. Fortunately Chris was post call and around in the afternoon to keep her company and Pa returned at 5PM from the gym as well. Her nose was still blocked and she occasionally coughed and choked, and her appetite was affected as well.

Parents of sick children really do suffer more than the kid sometimes, emotionally and physically...