In an effort to add some much needed levity to the last 24 hours and to help to distract me from the incessant murmurings of 'Mommy' coming from upstairs where my son and husband are getting the former ready for bed, I thought I'd write a post.
Right.
Yesterday I collected Alfie from nursery and was told that he had had a good day but might be having some trouble with teeth because he had appeared to be in some pain during the afternoon. It was suggested that we send in some Bonjela the following day. Easily sorted I thought but also remembered that Alf and I had nice plans to meet up with a mom and daughter we met at a First Aid course we took an eternity ago. We got home and Alf became ridiculously clingy for someone who had had a good day at school. He wasn't himself, sitting around and crying rather than running around like his usual maniacal self. He just made it through his bedtime routine, possibly dehydrated from the copious amounts of tears shed over seemingly insignificant matters. This is 6:45. Fast forward to 8, his exhausted mother finds something she can watch on TV and slumps for 45 minutes. Cue crying. Not constant but starting up every couple of minutes for about 30 seconds. At 9:45, I give in and go to check on Alf whose cries are more insistent now. He comes to bed with me. Bert returns home from football and is relegated to the futon in the living room. We all settle for sleep, Alf on my chest. I get claustrophobic. This has always been Alf's way to 'sleep' with his parents until he finally goes into a deep enough sleep that we can ditch him somewhere between ourselves and the wall. Alf is squirming and digging and rooting around. he starts pulling hair and laughing insanely about nothing that I can see. At 11, I decide that I am not able to sleep like this and that Alf is clearly not sleeping so the best thing would be to just cry it out and have a shot at some sleep for both of us. Alf doesn't agree with my choice and cries for the next 3 hours. Bertie and I do our best to ignore him and he finally goes off to sleep. At 5:40 we are up for the day.
I've lost interest in this exercise already so the short of it is that Alf was wheezing quite a bit. I took him to the GP and waited for 45 minutes. Ten minutes later, we were on our way to the Children's hospital to meet with a pediatrician. Alf screamed the place down. The staff couldn't believe how loud he is or how stubborn he is about being pissed off. It took two tries to get his heart rate with the machine that simply clips onto your finger. He screamed as soon as the stethoscope appeared, even harder once the tongue depressor did its trick and through the whole chest x-ray. He's fine, just has a viral chest infection but his lungs are clear. the solution is to give him puffs from and inhaler to help him breathe until his infection clears up.
The three staff nurses are joking about who has to come in and demonstrate for us with Alfie how to use the inhaler and volumatic dispenser thingy. They expected us to be able to put this mask on his face and hold it in place four times for 30 seconds each time, four times a day. Alf went ape shit. It took 3 of us to give it to him for 10 seconds, I'd say and by the end of it we were all sweating. He heeds it and so we will do our best but we have a strong son and a very determined one at that. I think someone out there needs to spend a bit of money researching how to make the whole inhaler dispensing process more passive. But, it's 7 now and the house is quiet. We'll hope for a bit of sleep and a better day tomorrow. Hey, at least it didn't rain all day!
