Sunday, October 15, 2006

Feed a fever...

So Nurse Beth tonight said that you shouldn't treat a baby's fever unless it gets to be 105. (insert ZOINKS icon here) - Nurse Sara, however, (on Friday night) said to give her Tylenol and Motrin any old time.

So um - do you think the nurses could get together and have a little pow-wow to at least give out consistent information please?

Malka's fever broke this am, and was pretty normal all day. But then it went up again tonight.

Beth said that a fever is a GOOD thing. It means her body is fighting infection. She asked if there were any other symptoms, and I shared about the neon green snot. This is daycare cold #4 - and by far the worst.

Now, being a science geek at heart, I totally understand the concept about her little white blood cells marching like an army to battle the big bad virus called the cold, and needing the help of body heat to make the battle go smoother. I get it. But could someone tell my Eemah heart that is worried sick about her baby that she'll be fine?

I KNOW how lucky we are with this being her FIRST fever at 10 months old. We are VERY lucky. But I still worry about the Malka Palka Pooka Palka. Beth said to call in the morning when they open. I might have to take her in. Ugh.


(I will confess that the extra clinginess was kind of nice, however, given her new found independent status....)





.... for those that are interested, here's the fever progression:

Friday at daycare - She slept form 10:30am to 2:30pm. OY. First red flag.
@ 8pm - "hmm, she feels really warm - I'll take her temp" - it was 101.5; we gave her tylenol
@10:15pm (she woke up whining, and where we'd usually let her soothe herself back to sleep, we wanted another temp reading.) It was 100.9 (YEA Tylenol)

Saturday:
@ 5:45am - 100.9 (gave her tylenol)
@ 7:00am - 99.9
@ 11:45am - 101.8 - (gave her tylenol)
@ 4:00pm - 102.8 - (gave her motrin for the first time)
@ 5:00pm - 101.4
@ 9:00pm - 97.7

Sunday:
@ 5:00am - 100.8 (gave her tylenol)
@ 8:00am - 97.8
@ 10:45am - 99.8 (gave her motrin)
@ 2pm - 99.4
@ 7:30pm - 101.9 (gave her tylenol)
@ 8:20pm - 100.8
@ 9:30pm - 99.3


All of this information is thanks to the new chalk-board-painted front door - it's an easy spot to record all of this...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

So does Nurse Beth make a house call when your baby boo has a fever of 103 and is really cranky? Will she hold her and walk her around in the middle of the night when it's 104?

We're dealing with the same thing down here in DC--green goop coming out of the eyes and fever for the past 2 days. I'm cursing daycare and thankful for the tylenol.

Hang in there Ms. M.

Anonymous said...

wow. that is some serious charting there.
hope the Palka Pooka Palka cuteness is feeling better today.
xo

FosterMommy said...

I'm on Nurse Beth's side, you definitely want the fever to stick around and fight the germs. It's harder for her to fight the cold without the fever. Even though she feels better on the tylenol. If she's feeling crappy and it's helping her sleep a ton, that's good, cuz sleep will let the body concentrate on kicking the germs. I know you want MP3 to feel better, but tylenol "better" is just a placebo. The tylenol doesn't get rid of the virus. :)

Teething fevers, however, are pointless (how can you fight teeth?) and should be reduced. Our FD gets raging teething fevers. But when she had an ear infection and 103F, we didn't reduce the fever and just let the antibiotics do their stuff.

Anonymous said...

We've had the same thing happen when we call the nurse for things with Mitchell. One will say one thing and the next will say something else. But I have heard that the new word on fevers is to let them be unless they get really high, as fostermommy explains above. Hope MP3 (love that nicknam!) feels better soon.

Jack Steiner said...

Sick children always make us a little nervous. But I always remind myself that the population of the world is not shrinking and that things work out just fine.