In my last post I mentioned that Jack was a little unwell. He got worse. He slept all saturday and had a high temp. By the end of the day he got so that he wasn't eating and then spent all night screaming because he was hungry but still wasn't eating. I stayed up with him on Saturday night, and got all of 1 hours sleep over two naps.
Sunday morning I called the weekend emergency doc (because the regular doc is closed on weekends) and got him an appointment at the Bay Call surgery in Morecambe. His temp was still high despite us giving him calpol and keeping him undressed other than his nappy.
The doc checked him over and said he had a throat infection. He has spots all inside his mouth which is likely to be why he wont suckle. He gave us some penicillin for him, a script for some other medicines, and cream for the spots in his back and chest.
After being messed about by the only pharmacy open at 8am on a Sunday (run my ignorant muppets!) we got him back home and gave him his medicine - but not his cream since the pharmacy had none (they told us to go back Monday afternoon when they would have 2 tubs, but guess what, they still had none). He was still crying from hunger so we started to syringe and spoon feed him some expressed milk and he took loads of it, poor hungry little feller.
Monday and he's still bad. Yorkie tried to look after him over night so that I could get some sleep as I had work on Monday, but night time routines are not his strong point when Jack is fit and well, so doing it when Jack's poorly was awful. We both wound up getting only an hour or two at the most.
Now Jack has a serious nappy rash too because he'd started to get diarrhea too. We called for the health visitor to come out as problems with the skin in his nappy area was one of the things the doc had asked us about on Sunday but he's been ok then. I wound up calling work to tell them I couldn't go to the vitally important meeting I was supposed to attend and give a report to because Jack was so ill (although my Boss was great about it, and I emailed my report to him) and stayed home trying to nurse our little boy back to health, with the Health Visitors number on speed dial if he got any worse or stopped eating again.
By late last night he was starting to pick up a bit. I made up the Z-Bed in Jack's room so that he could sleep in his own room and if he had a bad night I could stay in there with him. Then Yorkie could have a good nights sleep, and tonight we'll swap as I am supposed to be working again tomorrow.
He took some baby rice with his milk and that helped to fill him up and got him to sleep better, but he still wont latch on to me for a feed. He wont take a bottle or even his dummy, so I'm hoping it's just because his mouth is still sore. But the longer he goes without taking a feed from me the less likely he is to go back to feeding from me.
I asked the health visitor about getting him back on the boob and she said it could go either way, some babies go back without too much trouble, while others suss out that it's a lot less hard work for them to be feed from a spoon and wont go back. I keep trying him though, every time he wants feeding I offer him boob. At the moment he screams and screams if I do that, but like I said, he wont suck anything at the moment. Once he starts to take his dummy again I'll be more insistent about breast feeding because then it shouldn't be a sore mouth stopping him from suckling.
I'm desperate for him to go back to breast. But I am preparing my self in my mind for him not doing, that way if he does go back I'll be thrilled. If I build myself up to him going back and he wont I'll end up tearing myself apart over it. In the mean time I am expressing for England so at least he's getting what he needs, even if it is the hard way for us.
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