Last time he was completely unfazed by the whole experience until we got to the shots. But this time, as soon as he laid eyes on the doctor he started wailing, and wouldn't stop until the doctor left! I was so taken aback, as he's never shown any kind of "stranger danger" anxiety before (except for one day that his lip wobbled when my sister in law said hello to him). But Dr. A just chuckled and said, "That's okay, that's good! That's very developmentally normal for four months. He knows I'm not his mom or dad." It was so sad but also cute... he just cried and cried as Dr. A listened to his heart, checked his legs, put him on his tummy, standing, sitting, etc.
To our surprise, he told us Miles is teething! The drooling, the hand chewing... I thought it was just exploration, but Dr. A thinks his bottom teeth will come through soon. We had no idea because Miles is almost never fussy, and when he is, it's not for long.
I was pleased that Dr. A said there's no need to start solids until 6 months, although if we wanted to we could start with cereal and so on - but it's not needed yet since he's breastfeeding and gaining well. I was hoping that he would be supportive of waiting and he said that without me asking so that was nice. We did get a very good, very detailed printout on how to introduce solids when the time comes.
When he left the room, Miles settled down, but then of course the nurse came in with the vaccinations. The shots made him scream again and it took some time to soothe and dress him as he cried... he didn't calm down until we left the exam room, poor little guy. We saw Dr. A in the hallway on our way out and all kind of chuckled together about the whole thing.
We then drove to Tar.get to pick up diapers and generic baby Tyl.enol - Miles fell asleep so I sat in the car with him while Mr. I went in. Unfortunately they did not have any of the generic Tyl.enol so he bought generic ibuprofen, which really isn't recommended for babies under 6 months but he didn't know what else to get. We just hoped we wouldn't have to use anything.
Miles did great all afternoon and evening until right about when we were going to bed. He slept in my arms through Lost and then he started feeling warm. I started taking his temperature over and over and over because he was really feeling hot to me... but I didn't quite have the guts to try to take a rectal temp so I was just taking his underarm temp. It went from the 99s to 100 to 100.2 and since it was climbing I decided to call the nurse line at the pediatricians.
They make you leave your basic info and wait for a callback and we had to wait for about an hour, during which time Miles's temp went up to 101 and he started to finally act sick. He was nursing, whimpering and moaning, and trying to fall asleep, and felt very hot. All we had was the baby ibuprofen and a package of baby Tyl.enol that I thought was a non-recalled lot, but Dr. A had cautioned not to use it because who knew if it would be recalled next. I didn't know what to do, so I just wet a washcloth and put it on his head. That seemed to bring down his temp and he woke up and started smiling and cooing at us.
Adding to the stress, it was a work night for Mr. I, which meant he had to wake up at 2 am, and here we were rounding the bend of 10pm. Finally I said I would just take Miles downstairs to wait for the nurses so he could sleep. I broke out my AAP baby care book and it said that there is no real need to treat a fever except to relieve a fussy baby... even a high fever is not actually dangerous as long as baby is not having convulsions or getting dehydrated. Since Miles was pretty content and nursing frequently, this eased my mind.
When the nurse finally called, she made me go through a rigamarole of questions about Miles's symptoms (there really weren't any besides the fever). She kind of unnerved me by tellign me that when you take an underarm temp you have to add a degree, so really his fever had spiked to 102. Ultimately she said to give him the non-recalled Tyl.enol. Fine. I got off the phone and looked through the directions to find how much to give him, but it didn't say! WTH? So I went online to find out and, just to make sure, I double checked the recall. Turns out it WAS a recalled lot! Good lord. So glad I didn't give it to him. Now I was stuck with no meds, but his fever was subsiding somewhat, into the 99s on the thermometer (so 100 I guess), so I decided to just try to get some sleep.
This was probably about 11 or 11:30. I tried to put Miles in the swing to sleep, but he was groaning and couldn't fall asleep, so I held him on the couch and the two of us napped until 2 am when Mr. Ibis got up and we could go back to the bed. Despite several wakeups and feedings, I guess I got SOME sleep? But it was a rough night.
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