I mentioned that Lily was sick. Turns out she was pretty sick. Her doctor kept commending me for bringing her in at "just the perfect time". He was saying how he's seen a hundred children with nothing more than viral infections so it was nice to find one who actually needed a doctor. I think he was trying to make me feel good about my instincts or something - but instead I mostly felt like, great - so *I* have the only REALLY sick child - awesome.
Which is not to say that there's anything horribly wrong with her. She just picked up a secondary bacterial infection after the viral infection that hit her earlier in the week. Thanks Dr. Brown from Toddler 411 - you taught me everything I know (seriously). Lily did a great job at the doctors and we came home with a prescription for antibiotics and strict instructions to watch her and make sure her breathing became more regular (uh - yeah - so go me for not EVEN NOTICING she was breathing faster than is normal). I went straight to CVS with her and was told, "oh we don't have that antibiotic here, we'll have it Monday". At which point I was like "uh - we need it now thanks". To make a long story short, the prescription that was called in was erroneously for a 30-day supply. We only needed 10 days. The issue wasn't that they didn't have the antibiotic at all, they just didn't have that much of it! Once that was straightened out we got our meds and headed for home. The important part (ooo foreshadowing) is that due to all the craziness it never occurred to me to ask about having the medication flavored....
So we get home. I give her the first dose. she loves tylenol, so she's going to love this too, right? WRONG. She HATED it. Refused to take it. I dont' know what to do because this kid needs to get on some drugs to fight this infection (with lung involvement!) now. So I break out the big guns - my chocolate pudding. I've had a bit of a pudding problem (I'm blaming baby Koi) lately and I reluctantly pulled out my last ramekin of pudding and offered it to her. I gave her one spoonful and then promised more - AFTER the medicine. Somehow this worked. She took it. Aha I thought - I've got this figured out. Um... no.
Evening comes - time for dose 2. So I pull out the pudding again. She takes one look at it and starts to cry. "no Mommy - i want ALL the pudding". The child refused to touch a spoonful of pudding unless I put ALL the pudding in the fridge in front of her and gave her control of the spoon. There was no way she was going to let me sneak a dose of antibiotic in the middle of her pudding fest. At this point I had a flashback to the summer after high school (eek) when we used to hang out on a friend's boat and drink beer. I hated the taste of beer, so I'd constantly eat tootsie rolls from a jar that happened to be there - to mask the taste. It was bad beer of course - the only kind one can get in high school. But as a result, tootsie rolls to this day taste kind of bad to me - like Coors Lite or something. Ugh. I think Lily was trying to avoid a similar situation with the chocolate pudding. No way was she going to let me ruin pudding for her at such an early age. Smart kid.
We decided not to push it and put her to bed without the dose. I figured - we'll just wake her up when we go to bed and give it to her then. She'll be half asleep and will comply. Holy off the mark Batman. We woke her at 10 or 11 and tried to give her the medication. She went INSANE. Like demon child from the exorcist insane. At one point she was sitting in the corner of the bed, screaming NOOOOO at the top of lungs and waving her arms in a constant arc in front of her so there was no way in hell we could get near here. Gordon remarked that if she had access to a machete we would not have survived. It was AWFUL.
We cajoled and begged and pleaded - to no avail. We resorted to holding her down and using the syringe. That didn't work so well either - she just spit it back out at us. At that point I left the room near hysterical. In the end Gordon had the genius idea of mixing it with cranberry juice and telling her that she either had to drink her "juice" or take the medicine. She opted for the "juice". I felt slightly bad about the lying to her part, but then realized that this was only dose 2 out of 20 and saw that we had no choice.
The good news is that the juice ruse has continued to work and we've now gotten 6 doses into her. She does like to tell me at night how she's "not taking medicine" and really, that's fine with me. I just smile and nod and help her finish up all of the "juice". Today she was much better and we all even got out to enjoy the spring day. We visited our favorite park and it was like a mini-reunion there. All the neighborhood families were out - it's so great to see everyone emerging from hibernation. We even started getting our deck cleaned off. Yay spring.
I haven't talked about Baby Koi in a while, but this post has gone on FAR longer than planned. I will say that I'm 29 weeks today and everything is going along smoothly. However, I cannot breathe very well and nearly keeled over walking back from Davis. I don't remember being quite this short of breath with Lily, so maybe Baby K is carrying a little higher or something. Also the heartburn - ugh. It's harder to enjoy food now because of it - but hey - that's the 3rd trimester for you. I'm feeling pretty huge these days - which reminds me - I should post a photo soon. I'll try to get to that this week. And with that thought, I'm off to bed. So I can lie there, tossing and turning (with great effort) and getting up to pee every 2 hours.
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