Back to the doctor

11/20/10

On Monday, Pax started to come down with a cold. He was really snotty, but acted fine. Before I left on Wednesday for my conference, I noticed that he was coughing and wheezing again. He had done the same thing in August, right after he had started daycare. He had also been tugging on his ear. Now, he had been doing this before his 6 month appointment and fooled us all because his ears looked fine. So I was a little hesitant to take him in. However, when he woke up on Saturday, he was cranky and grabbing his ear again, along with still wheezing. Our peditrician has Saturday hours, so I called and talked to the nurse. As she went down the list of standard ear infection questions (does he have a fever? no; does he fuss when he eats? no; is he still eating the normal amount? yes), I was starting to think that I was imagining things, but she told us to come in anyways.

Thankfully, we did because he did have an ear infection, but in the opposite ear that he was pulling on. The doctor also listened to him wheeze and suggested a breathing treatment. She told us that she would do one in the office and then if it helped, she would send us home with a machine. The nurse came back in and warned us that he might scream during the treatment. I had to pin his arms and legs down and keep him from squirming. He hated it and screamed like crazy. I think the mask and the loud noise scared him. Well the treatment did end up helping, so we were sent home with the machine (yippee!) and instructions to do a treatment every four hours until he didn't need them anymore.

Once we got home, we had to do another treatment and discovered that our machine had a mouthpiece instead of a mask. I was dreading attempting it because I didn't think a 7 month old would be able to get the concept of a mouthpiece. I was wrong! He loved it! He just sat there and chewed on it the whole time. After that first time, the novelty did begin to wear off and he became more fussy, but handled the whole thing well. Now he's back to his normal breathing and we don't have to torture him anymore with the machine. He is still on antibiotics and will go back to the doctor in a week to get his infection checked.

Even when sick, Paxton continues to be an incredibly happy (and easy) baby. Hopefully he'll continue to be a good sick kid in the future!