So Tuesday night, Nate and I both started feeling terrible. He was laying on the floor whining, so I gave him some sudafed and tylenol and sent him to bed. Then before I went to bed, I took some Tylenol cold and sinus night time. I knew it was safe to take while I was pregnant, so I figured it was safe while nursing too.
The next morning, Nate woke up feeling fantastic! He was bouncing on our bed and laughing and having a great time. I was so sure I'd be taking care of a sick kid all day, so this was a great surprise! Off to school he went!
I, on the other hand, felt miserable. Stuffy nose, sore throat, congested chest. I didn't want to take the night time medicine again, so I started to take a sudafed but thought I'd call my doc to make sure it was okay while nursing. After a half hour on the phone and being transferred 3 times, a nurse gets on the line and says, "Yeah, um, NO." Really? What can I take? "Pretty much nothing." I didn't believe her, so I called our pediatrician. They said the same thing! It turns out that decongestants are "moderately safe" for the baby, but they can dry up your milk! So now I have to suffer through this cold without any medicine. I figured just that one dose the night before wouldn't hurt my milk supply ... but I was wrong! It dramatically reduced it. I ate oatmeal (supposed to help milk supply) and drank water and nursed all day to try to get it back, but by evening, Georgia was hungry, and I couldn't do a thing for her. I had a little frozen milk in the freezer, so I heated that up and Blake tried giving her a bottle. She has totally forgotten how to take a bottle. She couldn't get her mouth coordinated. She got maybe a half ounce. But she was still hungry, and I knew none of us were going to sleep until she got her belly full! So we ended up feeding her with a medicine dropper. :) A couple droppers full, and she was out for 7 hours. And this morning, the milk was back and all was well with the world again. I have learned my lesson. No more cold medicine!
This afternoon I was thinking about how unfortunate it is for Nate that the h1n1 vaccine is apparently not available in Kentucky yet. With a kid like Nate, if he gets the flu, it's very dangerous. He has already had the regular flu vax, and he also needs the h1n1. So I looked online and found out that there are certain parts of the state that DO have it! And the closest place was two counties over, and they were having a flu clinic this evening. So I threw the kids in the car, drove over an hour, and got there right after the clinic started. There were probably a couple hundred people there, and they let us know there might not be enough for everyone. There were two lines--one for generally healthy older kids and adults, and another for high risk groups like pregnant women, small children, people with asthma, caregivers of small children, etc. So we got in the second line. Can you believe there were people smoking in this line full of asthmatic children? Ugh. Anyway, we waited in line for 1.5 hours, and Nate and I did get it. He was such a trouper, with the waiting and getting the shot.
So I'm still sick, and Georgia is pretty stuffy herself. I've cancelled all activities for the last couple days, and it's actually been nice. I've had time to do housework and just hang out with the kids without our usual hustle. Yesterday I taught Nate how to make a peanut butter sandwich, and he enjoyed helping me with everything from putting laundry in baskets to cleaning up his trains. Today when we got home from school, we sat in the driveway and watched a fuzzy caterpillar crawl across the driveway, then we took a walk. These are some of the reasons I love staying home with the kids.
There's always something going on around here, and I feel like my full time job is keeping my brood alive and in fairly good health. :) It's quite a job.
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