Pink Eye, the Croup and Fevers, Oh My!

We've had a rough week.  One day last week, I noticed that the skin around my baby girl's right eye looked a little red and puffy.  I took her to daycare and asked them to please watch it for me.  When we picked her up that night, the teachers thought that she had just scratched herself and it was healing.  Fine.  The next morning, her eye didn't look better.  And it had some yellow gunk around it, but I was still going on the scratch theory.  But then when I brought her into daycare and saw her eye under those bright fluorescent lights, I knew something was wrong.  I put her right back into her car seat and brought her to the doctor, who instantaneously proclaimed she had conjunctivitis.  Sigh.  So we gave her antibiotic ointment 3x a day for the next 5 days.

A couple days later, my toddler son lost his voice and had a low-grade temperature.  I thought it was strange that he would lose his voice but he sounded so cute!  That night, around 1:30 am, he didn't sound so cute when he woke himself up with that horrible croup cough.  Ugh.  I knew immediately what that was.  So we calmed him down and got him back to sleep.  And we kept him home from school the next day because he was still sick and had a low grade temperature.  I also brought him to the doctor and got him some oral steroids to help him through the next night (because croup is worst at night).  He's been on the mend since then.  He still has a bit of a cough and a runny nose, but he's acting like himself again.

But the saga continues.  Whatever croupy virus my son brought home with him also attacked poor little Sammy.  The night after Ian woke up with his croupy cough, I was feeding Sammy in the middle of the night.  And she felt hot.  Really hot.  Ruh roh.  So I took her temperature and it was 101.6.  Crap.  I gave her some Tylenol and in the morning her temp was back to 98.3.  Great!  But then over the next 3 days, she continued to have low-grade fevers (like 99.9 or 100.1) and my gnawing motherly instinct finally told me to bring her to the doctor.  I really did think she was fine and just fighting a cold because her fevers never got worse and her behavior was otherwise normal.  But I was worried that perhaps she had an ear infection.  So I brought her to the doctor one night after work and of course, she was fine.  And now, the poor thing, is just all congested from a bad cold.  We let her sleep in her car seat last night so that she could be upright because sleeping in her crib lying down wasn't doing it for her.  I hope she gets better soon!

3 visits to the doctor in 1 week.  I hope to never repeat that again.