Monday, December 6, 2010

I'm really grumpy. You might not want to read this.

Greg and I have been sick since Wednesday.

We were too sick to drive Jack to daycare, so he stayed home with us (miraculously healthy! hurrah!). We shipped the dogs off to my in-laws on Friday night (thank you Jim and Nancy!). We survived on cereal (until the soy milk ran out), homemade chicken soup (from a friend, amazing), and orange creamsicles (oh what sweet relief).

We both have had horrendous sore throats, but it's really the fever that's done us in. It comes and goes in hourly cycles and spikes up decently beyond 103. I've never shaken so violently or sweat so much in my life. Oh, right, except for three weeks ago, when I was sick with the exact same thing the first time around! How is that even immunologically possible?

Can you tell it's been a miserable week? I'm not in the best of moods.

My in-laws very kindly offered to take Jack for us, however, that would not have worked out. I lost my freezer stash of milk several days before returning to work, and, since then, I've only been able to heat-treat and freeze about a day's worth of non-rancid milk for Jack. We're still sort of joined at the hip (uh, boob).

So what do you do when you have a very young child to take care of and can't do anything but lay in bed and fantasize about proper thermostasis? You watch an entire season of Hell's Kitchen, and then an entire season of Top Chef, then some Better Off Teds, 30 Rock, Dexter, and then an entire season of The Next Iron Chef. Then you complain that there's not enough TV. You play silent wars with your spouse, waiting to see which person will be the overly chilled sucker to admit they can hear the whining and walk the dogs. You pass Jack back and forth to whoever is emanating the least amount of heat at the moment. Occasionally you put him in his activity center until he starts shouting for attention. You let him roll around in the bedside co-sleeper while halfheartedly dangling some toys above him to swing at. You cry when he cries because you're just so tired and you desperately, desperately need someone to take care of you but instead you have to take care of someone else. You rue the day that adulthood arrived.

And then, between the predictable rise and fall of your fever, there's a moment of respite: you cuddle your little one close, make him giggle, kiss his nose, and realize that despite the fact that this baby has brought what surely must be The Black Plague home from daycare... he's the best pain relief that ever existed. Nature's truest irony.

Last time I had this, I got quite dehydrated, Jack was in daycare for a few days, and my milk supply dropped to less than half of normal output (I know from careful pumping logs). Jack got sick with a high fever several days after I did. This time, Jack nursed every two hours and my supply is doing better. He also has no signs of illness, yet (coincidence? perhaps not). We're flying to Arizona on Thursday (just Jack and I! On a plane! Two, actually...). Hopefully we'll both be healthy for our trip.

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