Poor little guy...

Ethan has had a rough few weeks with his bottom 2nd set of molars trying to come in. They are a bear... but after a week his appetite and fluid intake kept decreasing, he continued to get low grade fevers on and off, and he has been getting more and more cranky and clingy. I'm such a worry wort, but don't want to take him to the doc until I absolutely have to or know what is going on. He also has been grabbing at his diaper and saying "owy!" and so then we've been concerned about urinary problems like a UTI, but that's uncommon in little boys since their ureter ("pee" tube in lay-man terms) is so long compared to girls. So yesterday (thursday) all afternoon I'm thinking "should I call and make an appointment for friday because I don't want to end up with a really sick kid on a weekend..." and then thinking "but what if nothing is wrong and then I feel like a total idiot of a mom walking out of the doctors office for nothing" but then I remind myself that Ethan rarely gets sick and when he does, I've never taken him in without coming out after finding out he's got a full blown double ear infection or something like that. But still, I held off. I'm a worry wort and I can never figure out for sure if it's me worrying or if it's God helping me know that something is wrong, afterall I strongly believe and know that motherhood is a partnership with God. These little children are His and He in turn will help parents to do their best to help His little ones.

Being a medic, people always tell me I must be a super mom when it comes to my kid getting sick. I try to tell them that when it comes to fevers, vomiting, diarrhea, the usual... I'm just like every other mom out there. Broken bones, lacerations with lots of bleeding, appendicitis symptoms, kidney stone symptoms, heart attack symptoms, that I can do. Yes I have some extra knowledge from being a medic and also my year of working in the ER and observing what nurses and docs would do for children who came in ill. So I know the basics of giving clear fluids (juice and water that you can see through) to children who are vomiting, sticking to the BRAT (bananas, rice, applesauce, toast), etc. Or how much motrin and tylenol to give to what weight of a infant or child and how to overlap these meds for best effect. etc, etc, etc...

So this morning after Ethan woke up again last night in pain, I decided to suck up my pride and take him in today. They weren't sure about urinary problems since he can't pee in a cup yet, and they didn't have the special bags to tie around his wee wee to catch the pee (why they don't have those, I'm not sure! those were essential items we always carried in the ER- I was also the ER stocker for a few months and got really used to what items were the "hot" items that were used most often). His ears were fine (thankfully!) But his throat was really red, which would make sense about the lack of food and drink lately... they said they could do a strep test, but there's so many bacteria other than strep to cause inflammation, so we just opted for antibiotics and will hope it helps him be happy once again over the weekend. Until then, we've stocked up on soft foods, juice, suckers and popsicles... happy times being a mother! But I do like to think that I am in-tune with my motherly instincts sometimes. I had to re-iterate to the PA we saw, that he's extremely healthy, rarely sick, and my gut is saying "something isn't right". Thankfully the guy listened and was mostly thorough with his check of Ethan. So to my wonderful brother who's just about to graduate from medical school and going into pediatrics... hope you already have learned to listen to moms! As the saying goes, Mom's know best. Or at least I like to think so.

And P.S. our little fishy survived his first night and is happily still swimming. I have such trauma from fish not lasting at our house as a child... I think I may have been the child who was well known to dump an entire container of food into my brother's fish bowl and the fish happily ate it's way to it's death. What a way to die, right?