Winter Colds

Well, it didn't take long for Collier to catch his first sickness... 6 weeks to be exact. Last Monday evening, he developed a bit of a cough, hoarseness when he cried and lots of nasal congestion. That night, we didn't get a wink of sleep. Our poor guy felt terrible and there wasn't much I could do but hold and rock him. The following morning, I took him to the doctor where I was told that he was too young for any medicine (couldn't they have just told me that over the phone rather than have me come in and pay a $30 co-pay???). The only thing I could do was to use saline and suction his nose periodically. As you can imagine, the following days were rough on Collier... and on us. Not much sleep and a fussy fussy baby. Six days later, he still has a bad cough and lots of congestion. Thankfully, we've managed to keep Noah well, so far. With the exception of picking up Noah from school on Friday, we've spent the week indoors and out of the cold and windy weather.

To be honest, it's really been one thing after another for Collier these past 2 weeks. The week before he got sick, he had an entire day of non-stop crying and absolutely no nap. He was exhausted but every time I laid him down, he woke up screaming as though he was in pain. His poor little eyes were so red and swollen and he looked pitiful. I called my mom desperate for help and we both came to the conclusion that something was obviously bothering him. I took him to the doctor and he was diagnosed with reflux. He weighed 12lbs 12oz and was in the 97% for weight. After looking at his weight gain and talking about his recent behavior, Dr. Allen came to the conclusion that Collier is a very efficient nurser and was overeating causing him to have tummy pain and reflux. Collier was prescribed Zantac and I'm supposed to nurse him half the amount of time that I was nursing him. It took a couple of days for the Zantac to kick in and we finally had a happy, content baby... until he got sick with his cold 1 day later.

Hopefully, we are on the tail end of this cold. I hate seeing my little baby feel so cruddy. Not only that, but I'm ready for a decent night's sleep (as I'm sure Collier is too). After catching the cold on Monday, he had two nights of no sleep, but slept really well Wednesday night and Friday night. In fact Friday night, he almost made it 6 hours between a feeding. However, last night (Saturday night) he was up every 2 - 2 1/2 hours. And I think he may be going through a growth spurt because as of the past two days, he's been acting hungry every 2 hours or so. It's hard to do any Christmas shopping with a sick newborn and all of this cold weather! As much as I don't want to, I may have to resort to giving out a few gift cards to those left on our Christmas list!

**Please excuse my generic blog header/design... my laptop crashed and I'm borrowing my father-in-law's and don't have access to Photoshop. Also, please excuse the poor quality of these pictures... they were taken with my iPhone.


... sick baby boy ...


... this is what we do when we're bored inside, we watch tv upside down ...


... and play in boxes ...


... he may be sick, but he still gave me this huge grin ...