I had a “bad mama moment” today.  I took Joe to boot camp, completely unaware that he had quite a high fever.  He’d been fussy and not sleeping well, but then again he’d been like that for the past 2 days.  I didn’t read much into it and decided to go ahead, catch the bus, and head to the park to work out with the other mums.

We got there a few minutes early.  Joe seemed to be doing OK, albeit a bit subdued.

*****I’ve been slowly introducing Joe to water in a sippy cup.  He never gets much out – maybe only a few mLs at a time – but we’re working on it.  I still want the majority of his fluids to come from breast milk*****

Joe enjoyed sitting with the other babies.  It’s fun to see how he compares – he’s the oldest one of the bunch.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that I wasn’t going to get much of a workout.  At one point, I was doing walking-lunges with Joe in my arms, hoping that this might keep him happy.  Eventually, we’d both had enough.  I packed it in and headed to the bus stop; we got on board and sat next to a rather interesting, elderly German woman who was full of stories about her marriage, her 3 children, her daughter’s eye surgery at the age of 9, her complications with gall stones, the fact that her husband was currently hospitalized – it was quite an informative journey and Joe seemed interested in everything she had to say.

Joe and I eventually got home and I was finally able to take his temperature: 39.6C {about 103.4F}.  He took some paracetamol {similar to acetaminophen} and slept for nearly 3 hours.  Once he woke up, we cuddled, read, and played, but it was obvious {to me} that he still wasn’t his usual self.

“Reading” a book, of course!

I tried a few other tricks before giving more paracetamol: cool bath, lots of nursing, giving him cool applesauce, and wiping him down with a cool cloth.  I took his temp a little while later, and it had gone up a smidgen more {39.7C}.  So, another lot of paracetamol, more nursing, more cool cloths, and eventually bed in his t-shirt and sleeveless summer-weight sleeping bag.

I felt badly for taking him out when he was ill.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell, and I hesitate to whip out the thermometer and do a rectal temp at the slightest appearance of a flush.  I know that I can get paranoid, and I suppose that this was a consequence of trying to avoid that.

Hopefully he’ll be feeling better tomorrow morning and, next week, we’ll be able to do the full boot camp workout 🙂