Poor Little Bear has been sick, and today I finally took her to the doctors. Turns out she has bronchitis.
Because she had her needles a week ago, when she developed a fever six days later, we figured it was from the MMR needle which gave her brother Cheetah a fever & rash about 5 days after the needle (which is quite common). When she still has the fever 5 days later & her runny nose (which we put down to teething because she always gets snuffly when teething) had begun to give her quite a chesty cough, I finally caved & took her to the doctors. The only reason I took her was because I was worried she might have an ear infection (last time she had one, I didn't realise for several days because she only had a slight fever & general illness, nothing like ear pulling, inability to sleep, etc that indicates ear infection). Doc says her ears are fine, but she has Bronchitis so back on Antibiotics she goes.
This is the 5th time since she turned one that she has been sick (actually the 4th because the first time was a week before her birthday). Her chest rattles when she breathes & she constantly has snot streaming out her nose. I feel so badly for her. It was actually quite funny this afternoon though, because we were downstairs with no tissues, the two streams of snot made it past her mouth but didn't break & when she breathed out they made bubbles. She thought it was great. Loving mother that I am, I should have found something to wipe it up, but she was having fun & whenever I try to wipe her nose you would think that I was actually trying to rip out her nostril hairs individually the racket she makes (although that's nothing compared to the terrified wail she let out at the doctors when he tried to look down her throat).
At the doctors, Little Bear was exploring (the doctor has these neat steps that you use to get up on the 'bed'. There are two steps & Little Bear can climb up on them, but the bed is too high for her to climb onto. She loves to just climb up & down those steps until the doctor comes in). Unfortunately for the poor doctor (who is about 6 ft tall with a beard - none of the men in Little Bear's life have beards, other than the doctor), he walked in while Little Bear was not safe & sound in mummy's arms & he took her a bit by surprise. The doctor is very, very good with her & tries ever so hard to make her happy before he tries to do anything like look at her ears or listen to her chest. Unfortunately today, she was too sick to recover from her fright & when the doctor tried to feel her glands & look down her throat (which he does last because the kids don't like that much), she let out a kind of wail that I am glad I rarely hear. She was terrified & heartbroken & just generally upset to start with & I found it hard to reassure her instead of going out in sympathy. (To give you some idea, she didn't cry like that when she got her needles).
Anyway, she survived & she is finally in bed & sound asleep (after a short intermission from the land of nod, during which time we had to prop her matress up with pillows & rub vicks over her clothes (as it's too strong to put directly on her & the Tixylix was too hard to find). She is now sleeping like a princess & breathing like one too.
On the plus side, Little Bear & I are going to spend a day to ourselves tomorrow. I don't have too much housework to do (as I did about 3 weeks of catch up in the weekend just gone), and we are just going to relax & take it as easy as we can.
Here's a sneak peek of Little Bear's dress for the wedding on Saturday. She isn't feeling very well at the moment & so she wasn't really at her most photogenic at the time, but I'm sure we will get much better photo's on Saturday.
Similar to Kitcat, Little Bear's cot tends to become a meeting place for all the stuffed animals within stuffed animal calling distance (I think they are like giraffes - they can communicate with each other, sometimes over vast distances, but humans cannot hear the frequency they vocalise at).
