surprise!

yesterday when judah and jesse got home from preschool/work we noticed that the bug had a runny nose. then a few minutes later he started coughing just a little. something was funny about the cough. i went in the other room and he coughed again. it definitely sounded barky. something tickled the back of my mommy brain that a barking kind of cough meant something was going on. so we decided to take advantage of the fact that our pediatrician, while 20 minutes away from our house (its near both of our works), is open until 9 on weeknights.

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i was a little stressed because it was rush hour and raining and dark and i was pretty sure my baby was sick for the first time ever. i kept thinking "i need a special sign or something to alert the other drivers that i really AM more important than them this time. fayette county: YIELD! i have a sick baby! and sorry for all those other times when i was just on my way to lunch"

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right when i checked in i smelled a poop so i went to use the changing table in the bathroom. what ensued was the biggest diaper changing nightmare in all of my experience with judah. the table was like a miniature doctor's table with vinyl-covered, rounded padding on top and a paper roll covering the surface. so i laid judah down and took off the diaper. i knew it was bad when there was no visible poop in hammock portion of the diaper. it was an up-and-out-the-back one.

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his shirt was brown so i couldn't really see where baby gap ended and baby crap began. my diaper bag was on the ground and the table was precarious with no edges (in fact it was rounded as if to help him roll off). so keeping him on the table, out of his poop while trying to grab a new diaper, wipes and clothes out of the bag as i needed them was really challenging. it proved more so when judah decided to start wildly flailing around with the now soiled paper that was under him. he was pretty much making himself into a nutella crepe by doing violent origami with the paper.

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it was nightmarish. i was trying to pick him up and roll out new paper and not smear any more poo on him or the actual table or, god forbid, me. then the freaking roll of paper runs out. by now judah's clothes are off and he has poo all the way up to his neck and on the back of both arms and the remaining clean portion of paper under him was the size of a napkin. praying against all manner of pediatrician bathroom germ monsters i put his bare bottom down on the actual table and finished giving him a wipes-bath. somehow i got him dressed in a spare outfit and a clean diaper without going all stress-hulk on the office and exploding the door off its hinges in flustered rage. by this point i am sweating like a competitive hot dog eating champion with one bun to go. i gathered all the poop flake shrapnel that had been scattered all over the room and lysol-ed the heck out of that place. (i also found a stack of stamped, sealed, addressed christmas cards on the bottom shelf of the table....wtf?)

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it took a while to get called back and then of course an eternity for the doctor to actually come in. our pediatricians are supposed to be some of the best doctors available but their facility is really old and ghetto-furnished/decorated. there aren't many toys or distractions for sick and bored babies and the ones they have look like plastic ringworm bed and breakfasts of joy, the wallpaper is the pastel smear of 70's interior design that makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a rubber-coated spoon. to come up with a color scheme that is of zero visual interest to a 6 month old takes skill. hideous skill.

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so the moral of the story is that judah has full blown croup, a fever and 2 ear infections! we had no CLUE about the ears. he has been his normal happy self the last week during which the hoards of evil bacteria were setting up shop in his eustachian tubes like a gypsy carnival. i felt like such a failure to bring him to the doctor for a cough and be told that as a bonus that he had these going on too and i never even noticed. i guess i will just sit on that failure and be glad that we have a child whose ear infection are not torture to him.

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we got 2 antibiotics and a cough/congestion medicine and i was told "not to freak out if the fever gets to 105 or 106 tonight." hahaha, the doctor knows me so well. i am the LAST person to ever freak out, overreact or worry needlessly. especially about something like brain damage-inducing fever and my infant son.

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after another hour-long stop in the purgatory i fondly call my local rite aid we had our medicine. i have almost become a homicidal maniac 2 or 3 times in my life and they are all while waiting for a prescription while suffering from peruvian death flu. i understand pharmacist is a very important job that requires lots of schooling but when i am the ONLY person waiting and i have a very uncomfortable yet adorable baby and its pouring rain outside and i look like a frazzled blond werewolf of almighty impatience you'd think there would be a little hustle up in there. like okay, maybe i couldn't do your job better than you, but i could damn well move it with a quickness between all the unfamiliar ingredients. my favorite was when i had to call the doctor back because they had sent thye RX to the wrong store. i asked the pharmacist what the address of this one was and he didn't know!

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so we are on all manner and flavor of meds, including the crown jewel of hoped-for medicine when visiting the pediatrician: bubblegum amoxicillan! and of course you wouldn't know anything was even wrong with the bug because this is him in the middle of it all:

p.s. one year ago today we found out that the bug was a boy. happy Y-chromosomes to you all!