My Sick Boy

My little boy has been really really sick since my last post about the sleep training. Before I go any further, I want to thank all you lovely people out there that have offered such brothers-in-arms support over the sleep thing. It seems we are most definitely not alone!

So I am going to give a blow-by-blow account of the last week so I can just move on. I'll do it unemotionally, but know that there is supreme turmoil. You know it. In other news, I feel like I use this blog to vent. Scrap that. In other news, it is apparent that I use this blog to vent. I do, however, have so many things to be happy about. So I have a 'happy' blog where I am writing letters to my little boy about the new discoveries he makes in the day, and the ways that he brings me joy. If you want to read happy things, go over there.

Poor little sick boy at the doctor on Saturday morning

- Thursday night - attempted the sleep training. Resulted in a lot of vomit and a sad sad clingy boy.

- Friday - didn't eat much and just didn't seem himself throughout the day. The night greeted us with exorcist-style vomiting non-stop for an hour, fever, and a little boy who was very very poorly.

- Saturday morning - Doctor says gastro-enteritis and throat infection. Bean stops eating and drinking, and we battle battle battle to get some water into him with a spoon.

- All weekend - Doesn't eat or drink. Battles with the spoon. Wakes up every ten minutes in hunger and thirst all night, but really struggles to take anything in. Stops weeing throughout the night... waking up with a completely dry nappy.

- Monday - Keep calling the doctor, but it is engaged all day. ALL DAY. Small pimples break out around his mouth, what I think are a reaction to the vomit. At 5.30pm we call the emergency children's doctor, who says that we need to go in that evening urgently. She diagnoses Stomatitis, a viral infection which was causing enormous ulcers all through his mouth - gums, cheeks, tongue, throat, the whole shebang. We got anti-inflammatory meds, more pain-killers and a numbing spray for his mouth. She says to use Bepanthan on his spots around his mouth.

Those sores around his mouth are growing...

- Tuesday - After five days of not eating, my skinny boy (we both very much noticed how different he felt when we held him) began to eat a tiny bit of very cold yoghurt and some very very runny cereal. Seemed to be a bit happier.

- Wednesday - Still eating better and seeming much happier. Still a little dehydrated as can't have a bottle. Pimples around his mouth get bigger and begin to ulcerate.

- Thursday - HAD A BOTTLE! Yahreepa! Eating is almost back to normal. But those pimples are spreading...

- Friday - A tiny spot on his thumb has become an enormous pussy wound with tiny pustules all around it. The 'pimples' around his mouth are oozing and continuing to spread. Straight to the doctor, who now says it has become infected bacterially, and gave us an antibiotic cream to apply five times a day.

- Saturday - Thumb is looking absolutely horrific (I have a photo but won't make you vomit by showing it), and the infection has spread to two other fingers. Hitting it hard with the cream. Face is looking a little bit better... at least no worse. The boy is happy though, and is eating and drinking.

Let's see what tomorrow will bring. Still waiting for him to sleep longer than thirty minutes at a time at night...

Why do I still feel like this is connected to sleep training? Well, he vomited from stress during the torture - I'm sure of that. He was not remotely sick or unhappy throughout the day beforehand and he went to bed as usual, so I don't think it was the gastro then. The next day he was very clingy, understandably, and didn't eat very much. Perhaps the tummy bug got in because he was so exhausted from the night before, and the vomiting then had left him vulnerable... And from then on, one thing has led to another. Please please please make this the last thing my little boy has to deal with for a while...