Illness...

With his first birthday only a week away, Seth decided to celebrate by getting sick.

I've often said that I feel like we won the baby lottery - not only is he an easy, happy kid, but he's managed to avoid most of the dreaded baby sickness that you'd expect from a day-care kid. Well, he made it a long time, anyway...

On Tuesday, Rachel picked him up at day care and received the report that he hadn't been himself - lethargic instead of his usual constant-motion, and mildly feverish. At home, we administered some baby Tylenol and he went to the doctor Wednesday morning, after a rough night.

Diagnosis? The dreaded ear infection. The doc prescribed a penicillin-type antibiotic, which we started immediately -- twice a day. Administering it is an exercise in baby torture, involving either a medicine dropper or a syringe, and physical restraining.

For the next few days, Seth wasn't himself. At times he was playful, but he was frequently upset and/or listless. Fortunatly, he mustered the energy to play at bit with his aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. His fever broke after a couple of days. But there were no uninterrupted nights of sleep for him, or us.

Then, on Saturday, he woke up with an obvious rash over most of his torso. Another trip to the doctor, and they decided he was having a reaction to the antibiotic, so they switched him to a different one. The rash spread from his torso to his legs, arms and face, but dissipated within a couple of days.

This morning was the first time in almost a week that he was acting normal. We still have to give him antibiotics, and it's not fun for anybody... but there's only a few more days of it. And last night, he woke up twice (11-midnight and 3:30-4), which wasn't bad by the standard of the past week.

I guess if there's any upside, it's that this came while he was home anyway - day care wouldn't have let him stay there while sick, but it wasn't an issue since we had him home for the holiday week.