Thank God for an ear infection!!!

Seriously, I really mean it!

To say that the last week has been looooooong would be an extreme understatement! Emma woke up last Sunday with a slight fever and acting sick, so we stayed home from church and rested. I had a little cough, but no other symptoms so I thought it was just allergies. I started feeling worse and worse and was at the on-call doctor by Monday night, he diagnosed me with bronchitis. I wouldn't have even gone to the doctor, but I am 26 weeks pregnant and had just been around a neighbor who had bronchitis and I just didn't want to take a chance that the cough would turn into pneumonia or something harmful to the baby.

So I spent two whole days in bed. Luckily, my husband was able to use sick time to stay home and take care of Emma while I rested. While Cirt is an excellent, attentive father, he's not the best multitasker and wasn't really able to take of Emma and the household chores at the same time. When I came out of the bedroom after two days, the house was a bomb and hubby was saying that he felt sick, fantastic! Plus, now Emma was saying she felt "ick".

Cirt stayed home for the rest of the week and then Emma came down with a fever on Thursday night. She spent the next three days on the couch watching Clifford. She had a fever, which hoovered around 101/102, slight cough, and congestion. The most worrisome thing, however, is that she wouldn't eat, play, smile, hardly moved or talked, she just wasn't herself!!! So heartbreaking!! I knew she had a sore throat, too, because she would cough and then whine or cry. She wasn't sleeping well and didn't want to do anything!

I know some people would've run to the doctor right away, but I was trying not to be that mom (not that it's necessarily bad). I just felt that the fever meant she was fighting a virus or something and I should just let her body do it's thing, making sure she had rest and fluids. I usually just gave her Tylenol or ibuprofen at bedtime so she could sleep better. Our bodies are designed to heal themselves, after all, as long as everything is aligned and working properly. She's normally a really healthy little girl.

Finally, finally after 3 days of her just laying around she woke up Monday morning and didn't feel hot! She was really weak from not eating and kind of stumbled around when she tried to walk, but at least she was up, moving, doing puzzles and she actually ate 1/4 of a peanut butter sandwich and some crackers for lunch, wahoo! I thought she was on the mend. But, then she took a 3.5 hour nap, woke up crying and when I went in to get her she was completely burning up, whining again and didn't want to move. I took her temp. It was 104 degrees and I was scared! I finally decided to take her to the doctor. By this time, however, our regular doctor's office was closed so we had to go to the walk-in clinic.

When my husband got home from work, we bundled up our little girl, took her out in the rain and sat in that darn clinic for 2 hours with a hot, whiny, sore, sleepy, sick little girl. She was saying things like: "I'm feeling bad." "go home now". "need to go to doctor." When we FINALLY got to see a doctor, he took one look in her ear and said: "There it is, she's got a raging ear infection!" He let me look through the ottoscope (is that what it's called?). Her ear drum was monkey-butt red and the dr. said it should be pearly white. Poor, poor girl, I felt so bad! This is her first of, I'm sure, more to come. I used to get ear infections a lot as a little kid so I know how painful they are. They always seemed to strike in the middle of the night and I'd be up all night crying.

I'm so glad, however, that we know what the problem is and it has a quick and cheap fix. I'm not a huge fan of antibiotics, I think they are a little overused, but I'm so grateful that they exist and work in situations like this!!!! Praise God, my little girl is already feeling better and we had a really good day today. She's still whiny and not 100% herself but so much improved over the past 4 days.