A few days before Eb turned six weeks I noticed he had a hair in his eye and his eye looked a little irritated. The hair came out on its own, but his eye stayed irritated.
We decided to take him to the pediatrician just to be safe and discovered my silent concern was true - Eb had pink eye. We have no idea how he got it but the pediatrician assured us it wasn't our fault, pink eye is just super contagious and we could have brought it home from anywhere. Fortunately it's easily treatable with eye drops, even though Eb doesn't like them much it's not too bad. One problem down, should be enough for the week, right?
Of course not.
A sniffle that started on Friday turned into congestion so bad Eb had trouble breathing on Sunday (apparently Mom was right when she said all the excited things happen after the doctor's office is closed!). We took him into the pediatric emergency and were pleasantly surprised to find our doctor on call. Of course, as also often happens, Eb's nose was much improved by that point, but our doc gave me the courtesy of believing me anyway. He said because Eb was still so young we shouldn't give him any med. if we can avoid it an d his congestion should be easily cleared with saline drops.
Saline drops sound innocent enough, right? I thought giving him eye drops made me have Mommy guilt, welcome to a whole new dimension!
We had to hold his little head tilted back and put these drops next to his nose so he would breathe them in and then swallow them. Talk about awful. Naturally he screams like crazy and I almost cry every time for fear that we will drown him. So for seven days our poor little man was getting all kinds of medical intervention from his terrified, remorseful parents. Fortunately the drops worked quickly in clearing up the congestion and we were able to go from using them three times per day to once a day about half way through the week.
I'm not sure who had the harder week, Eb who had to receive the treatments, me dealing with all kinds of Mommy guilt and fear, or Chris who had to deal with and comfort both of us!
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