On Friday, I thought about bringing the boys in to the doctor. But Thane didn’t look so bad and I’ve sort of gotten used to the Varsuuvial flows of Grey’s nose, so I didn’t. Then Thane got worse over the weekend. I figured I’d bring them in Monday. Oh yeah, President’s Day. The office was closed.
He looked a little better Monday (and/or I was in denial) so I attempted to go to work. My daycare is by far the most forgiving I’ve ever seen regarding sending kids in less than 100% healthy (note: this is a double edged sword since it goes for ALL the kids in the daycare) but even they sent Thane home with me at noon yesterday. Of course, I brought Grey home too.
Diverting for a moment from my thesis of snot, I’d just like to report that we had poop successes yesterday involving timely self-reporting. WIN!
If you know me, you know I am not a morning person. Not at all. Not even a little bit. It is telling of what a profound effect parenthood is having on me; I felt like I got to sleep in this morning when no one woke me up before 7:20 am. Then I had to wait over an hour for the doctors office to open. But blessed be! They could see us today! This morning, even!
I generally like our pediatrician. He’s a no-nonsense, no-BS sort of guy. He’s the sort who tells you what’s what and doesn’t tapdance around it. OK, most of the time I like this. But this morning, I got quite a lecture on how six weeks of snottiness is about three weeks more than I should’ve let it go. Also, that I should’ve brought Thane back in when the last round of antibiotics didn’t solve the problem. (In my mind, it meant that it wasn’t a bacterial infection.) I feel divided on this. I’ll promise you this much: my parents wouldn’t have taken me to the doctor for this. Thane is snotty. He’s really congested. He’s not running much of a fever. He’s sleeping a lot and doesn’t have a great appetite, but chances are excellent he’ll recover on his own. In my world, winter = snot. The way I was raised, the degree of sick you need to be to stay home from school was some combination of a 100 degree fever, vomiting and exciting rashes. The bar for going to the doctor was even higher — usually requiring the suspicion of a strep infection (a very common problem in our household — my sister even had her tonsil out because of it). By the standards I was raised by (successfully, I’d point out), Thane’s illness is barely worth a get-out-of-school-free pass. But yet my pediatrician was disapproving that I’d waited so long.
Then there’s the third hand, where we’re all responsible for trying to keep health costs low and not go to the doctor every time we get the sniffles. On the fourth hand, the doctor is a doctor and I am a parent and he knows more about health than I do, EVEN when I research stuff on the infallible internet.
Also, he chastised Grey for playing too forcefully with a toy. I did not feel like the world’s most competent parent. (I also thought the toy was good for it.) But Grey was really being pretty good, I thought. Cue worrying about whether I’m becoming one of those parents who doesn’t notice their child’s behavior isn’t acceptable, instead of a parent who acknowledges that there are limits to the obedience a sick 3 year old can be expected to display.
Lessee… introduction, three paragraphs support, mandatory digression… oh yea. Time for conclusion.
Thank heavens for antibiotics. Yay antibiotics! My husband comes home tomorrow. Yay husband comes home!
Postscript: On the plus side, sick babies sleep LOTS
My Truant Pen 