Sleepless nights!

Having a sick child is never fun. I have to say, I've been so blessed to have a child that sleeps well through the night and takes good naps. I hope all our children are like this!! These sleepless nights just aren't my cup of tea!!

Finnegan started teething last night about 5:30... He was cranky and crabby. So I gave him his "normal" dose of Tylenol and 8pm came and I put him to bed. At 10pm he woke up and was crying, so I went back up and gave him another "normal" does of Tylenol. He was burning up and I took his temp and it was over 100. Almost 102. About 45 minutes later, he was still awake and kind of out of it. But awake. So I did what any other mommy would do... I pulled out my "What to Expect the First Year" book and began reading. Obviously I knew it was from teething and the temp was normal. I was reading about temp taking. Oh, how confusing!! The books says that recal temps are the best. Where under the arm and ear temps are acceptable but the under armpit is the most inaccurate. I decided to do the under the arm as that's less invasive. That temp was about 101. I have an ear temp guage, and I've heard over and over that they aren't accurate because you can't always get the same angle and blah blah blah. And I was finding that the ear temp wasn't always giving me the same temp. All I knew is that the temp was over 100 and less than 102... or just hovering at 102. No higher.

I got a cool washcloth and put it on his forehead. And he actually layed with it on his head for a while before moving. I then removed his jammies (footed fleece ones) and put the wash cloth on his back, as we rocked for a while. After changing his jammies into some cooler ones, he's temp had gone down about a degree (from cooling) but the tylenol wasn't putting him to sleep or breaking the fever as fast as I thought it should. So I pulled out the bottle and began reading about dosages... I'm an idiot. My child is 18 months old and weight about 27 lbs. Therefore, I'm allowed to give him the full dose - 1.6mg of baby Tylenol - which is TWO droppers full. His normal does.... was .4mg = 1/2 a dropper full. I'm an idiot. I immediately gave him one dropper full to help his little body. He seemed to go right to sleep after a bit more rocking and snuggling. At 4am, he woke up, and I gave him another full dropper full of Tylenol, as his temperature still hadn't broken... It was still hovering around 101. We rocked for a little while and I gave him another cold wash cloth, and he slept until 7am... when he woke up screaming... Obviously, he was awoken by the pain. But the good news was that his fever had finally broken. So it was Baby Orajel to the rescue, and then a couple more hours of sleep for the both of us. ** After some thinking, I decided that we'd started giving finnegan Tylenol at such an early age - .4mg at 3 months when he first started teething. And we really shyed away from giving him tylenol if we didn't have too. And when we did, we just gave him the does he was used too. He'd never teethed so bad before and always seemed to do just fine with the "normal" dose he was used too. So now that we've had this problem, we've adjusted his dose and it's closer to the suggested dose on the bottle :) **

When we woke up at 9am, he was refreshed and ready for the day. I was ready to just chill for the day but he was playing and back to his old self, other than the small loss of appetite. So we got out and ran some errands, and even took a walk with Daddy when he got home!

I sure hope Finn doesn't suffer from this too much. I know it's those darn molars! Hopefully he'll be done with the teething soon... at least this stint of it :)