A Sick Baby

Ooooh, let me tell you. Last week, starting Wednesday night, Cooper had something happen to him. He started to scream bloody murder AND developed a fever. Not from colick (he's not a colicky baby). Not from any physical pain that we could see. He just started screaming big time. It was the worst screaming we've had yet. It lasted through Friday with his temperature reaching 100.3 (Golden Oldies...email me if you get the joke). Saturday, we finally called the doctor (temp still high 99's), and on Monday, we took him in.

So the doctor told us on Saturday to give him some tylenol. We did, and it helped his fever, although, it didn't help his wailing. Allow me to tell those without children that when your baby starts running a fever, and he starts crying like Cooper did, it really tests you because you have no idea how to help. And we never want to see our children in pain. Anyways, the fever subsides, the crying doesn't.

So onto theories...Cooper's got really dry skin for some reason. And nothing we've done has kept it hydrated. As we eliminated his cradle cap last week, his head has started to itch more. He constantly is trying to scratch his head, almost to the point that he rubs it raw. That's why you see him with gloves on all the time, otherwise, he looks like he got in a fight with the cats.

We figured that maybe his dry skin is itching so much that it's causing him pain. So we've pretty much tried every remedy out that there that's not got petroleum (not good for them regardless of what you may think) or hydrogenation or a myriad of other things that are harmful to a baby in the long run. Has it helped? No. It hasn't. He still itches. His skin still gets splotchy and red.

As we're getting more and more frustrated b/c we can't figure it out, Abbie notices something. He has the worst crying after he eats and also at night. We haven't figured out the night thing yet, but our hypothesis is that he's allergic to something Abbie's eating. We can't identify it yet. But in order to ID a food allergy, one must detox for two weeks, eliminating that allergen the entire time, then reintroduce it (that's how I found out I was allergic to wheat). So Abbie's working to eliminate anything that could be allergy inducing, such as sugar, wheat, dairy, soy, eggs, tomatoes, peppers...just about everything other than green leafy vegetables. There's no guarantee that he's allergic to anything, but we have to be certain.

The other theory is that he's reacting to toxins that are being expelled from Abbie's body as she and I modify our diets and detox from alot of the junk we ate during the pregnancy. When you eat a healthy diet, coming off a poor diet, your body has to eliminate the waste products it's accumulated and stored. Those products are eliminated as toxins and are secreted in every bodily fluid (sweat, urine, etc). Its very possible that Coop's reacting to her body getting rid of toxins. If that's the case, then within a couple of weeks, he should be good to go. Either way, it's going to take us a couple of weeks to be sure what's going on with him, and that's harder for us since Abbie starts back at work on Monday.

Positive things: He's starting to sleep well through the night. Abbie and I switched up our nightly duties into shifts. The previous way with me handling all diaper changing duties and her handling feedings (naturally) didn't work because she was typically up from 3-6 intermittently as he fussed and awoke, then fell asleep, then fussed and awoke. It was killing her. So we do the shifts. I have the first half until 2AM, and she's got the rest until 6AM or we're both awake. Thankfully, he's only waking up once per night now to feed. We've discovered that when he's having a difficult time sleeping, his swing is his best friend because he'll finish up the night there with 3-4 hours swinging and sleeping.

That's it for today. Maybe Abbie will have something. Most likely, she'll post something to correct my information here since I'm not even 100% sure I got the story right. The whole past week has drawn together.