Poor little Ellie. I
don't mean that in a sarcastic or condescending way. At least not today anyway. She's actually having a rough go of it. Outside of sleeping for about 42 of the past
48 hours, she's now taking part in a new first for her. Her first fever. And not the kind Garth Brooks sang about...
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| Is it bad that I feel like Ellie actually makes this face quite often? |
Due to Ellie's epic exhaustion (try saying that five times
fast), we put her to bed around 7 last night thinking that was probably all
that we would hear from her until 2 am or so.
We were actually pretty wrong about that though. Right around 10:30, I heard loud shrieks
emanating from Ellie's baby monitor. As
I'm apt to do, I always wait a few minutes so that I can verify if she's
actually awake and needing help or just having a nightmare. Very quickly, I realized that she was
actually awake and really upset so I bounded up the stairs to check on
her. Side note, it's still totally
bizarre to me that Ellie has so many nightmares. What in the world can possibly scare a four
month old so badly that she'd resort to epic screams? I wouldn't think she'd be scared of the dark
or anything. I haven't read her ghost
stories around a campfire yet. I haven't
even let her watch 'The Blair Witch Project'.
#GoodDad
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| No 'Blair Witch' lady, Ellie's still too young to watch you. |
Right as I headed into Ellie's room, Bethany came out of our
bedroom to check on her as well. These
weren't screams that we had actually heard before from our daughter
however. They were more guttural in
nature. Definitely screams of
discomfort. After changing her diaper
and offering her some food, Ellie's moans continued. At this point, we realized just how warm our
baby had become. Taking her thermometer
out of the box and stuffing it under her armpit, we patiently waited for what
felt like an eternity but was probably only ninety seconds. Squinting at the digital readout in the dark,
we were dismayed to read 101.4 degrees.
Ellie definitely had her first fever.
At this point a small degree of fear kicked in for us, well
at least for me. I'd been around Ellie
when she's been unhappy before but never when she's actually sick. Nerves were definitely running wild for
me. Not certain if we needed to be
worried, we proceeded to dial the afterhours lines at our pediatrician. Leaving a message, we were told to expect a
response in eight to ten minutes.
Waiting there in the dark with Ellie moaning, my heart was definitely
breaking for her. Finally the phone rang
with the triage nurse on the other end.
While talking to her, it was pretty evident that there wasn't anything
to be concerned about at this time.
Ellie just had a little fever and we just needed to give her a dose of
Children's Tylenol and put her to bed.
I feel like it's times like this where I continue to realize
that there's a lot of things that I don't know about child rearing. I mean, I've barely figured out how to give
Ellie a bottle without it leaking milk all over the two of us. Seeing my daughter in that kind of discomfort
and not having any clue how exactly to help her is not a good feeling. At least I always have the internet. Surely anything I find about how to comfort a
child on Wikipedia is accurate, right? #DaddyWrite
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| Honest. I swear. |
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