Let’s start at the beginning; on Saturday (16th) Tristan woke with a bit of a cough and runny nose. I gave him so Dimetapp & Calpol and he seemed fine, until Monday! On Monday he woke with a very runny nose and a cough so I kept him home from school. That night was rough, but in hindsight it was a breeze, with him waking up at 11pm and staying away until about 2am. Tuesday & Wednesday days were ok but each night a little worse than the one before. I eventually took him to the doctor on Thursday as his snot had gone from clear to green; never a good sign. Our GP gave me an antibiotic but said only to take it if he wasn’t better by Friday so home we came and continued with 4 hourly Calpol. He had a great sleep that afternoon and seemed a bit better in the evening so gave him some allergex and put him to bed. And that was the start of, possibly, one of the worst nights with him.
8:30pm Tristan called for me to come lie with him so I did for 2 minutes and left again. Now I must just note that normally dad baths him, I read him a story, tuck him in and leave and he goes to sleep on his own. So after I’d lain with him I returned to spend time with hubby expecting him to have a good sleep. I went to bed at 9:30pm and that’s when he woke for the first time, and remained awake, until 5am. Yes, 5am Friday morning. I tried everything to get him to sleep, lay with him, cuddled him, rocked him, patted his bum, etc but nothing worked. I eventually lost my sh!t and called Shaun to help but that did zero as Tristan kept calling him every 2 minutes so I couldn’t even try catch a few minutes power nap. Around 1:30am he started complaining of a sore ear; initially I thought he was just doing it to avoid going to sleep because he’d done a lot (in my opinion) to avoid sleep that evening. I eventually felt I had to go have him checked out just in case. After plenty of waiting at the hospital we were seen and told that his left ear was a bit red but nothing major; they gave him 5ml stilpain and sent us home; it was now just before 5am!
On the way home Tristan fell asleep in the car; halle-fucken-lujah!!! Thank heavens he transitions well from car to bed so I carried him in, put him into bed and promptly fell asleep next to him (yes, he still sleeps in my bed). This morning we woke up at 10am, exhausted and still sick! So I picked up the antibiotics prescribed by the doctor on Thursday and am hoping for a speedy recovery. In time for our holiday; we fly to my parents on Monday.
What have I learnt from this (because we have to learn from every experience, right?!)? I’ve learnt that although I prefer to avoid antibiotics as much as possible for Tristan, I should maybe have listened to my gut yesterday and started them straight away. Maybe we would already be better today.
