Poor, Sick Baby

On March 12th Everett cried through his morning nap - a sign that something was up.

But, even in his misery, he had a little smile for his mama.
*Please excuse the terrible distortion of my handsome boy's face in the above photos.

That night was the WORST night of sleep EVER. I really shouldn't refer to it as a night of sleep even. It was a night of NO sleeping. Like, "I can't wait for it to be morning so that I am SUPPOSED to be awake," bad. Terrible. Poor, poor Everett. I didn't waste any time calling and making an appointment for both kids first thing that morning. But, I made afternoon appointments because Emily REALLY wanted to go to school, and it was picture day. So, Everett took his maiden voyage in his BIG boy car seat...
and Emily in her new position in the car. (She has always been behind the passenger seats in our cars.)
I took a few pictures of Everett in his new seat when we dropped Emily off at school.
He talked to himself in the mirror,
tried to force a smile for me,
and did check out his seat a little too.
That afternoon we were off to the doctor...

where we learned that Emily had one "bad" ear infection and Everett had two that were "far worse."

The doctor kinda jumped back, winced, and talked about how much Everett's ears must have hurt (and were making hers hurt after looking at them) for a good while. Even without all of that though, it was clear that Everett was feeling very, very lousy!

But Emily was in decent shape and was able to build a tower with what we had plenty of... pain meds.

That night I didn't bother with thinking I would sleep in my bed and set up right next to Everett. It was a much better night and I was able to comfort him as he lay in bed instead of the disaster we had the night before. And he actually slept for most of the night! And I got some sleep too!
By Thursday morning (the 15th) though, I was back at the doctor because his breathing was very labored and "juicy." His cough was also more of a choke... he just couldn't clear the mucus. After some poor test results he was given an inhaler treatment in the office, rechecked, and sent home with a prescription for his own. (He showed improvement with the treatment which meant bronchiolitis and not pneumonia.)
Everett had to have this inhaler treatment every 4 hours for 5 days (and then we slowly stretched it out and were finished with the inhaler after about 7 days).
But, we did have one more doctor's visit on the 20th to check in on everything and figure out why he wasn't nursing (almost none) nor drinking from a bottle.
He was all smiles as he waited for the doctor...
and sucked on his binky leash.
Once in with the nurse, he was hooked up to the pulse oximeter again (this time I could get a picture, or two)
and his results were near perfect!
His chest and ears had cleared up a lot and it was decided that his problem now was... teeth. His top four huge teeth. Those are brutal, but we can deal with them. So happy to have our healthy and happy boy back!

* All of this was caused by a virus - most likely RSV. It was a mild cold for Emily which led to the ear infection. But for Everett it was, obviously, much worse.

** Emily didn't have any more symptoms of the cold when I sent her to school. And she never complained... it just seemed to me that something was off (a little extra whiny, etc.).