Greer Elizabeth entered the world on February 9. It was a Thursday afternoon and it wasn’t the way I thought it would happen. In some ways it was better than I could have ever expected and in some ways it was the opposite of better.
The story really began the Friday before she came when Gideon climbed into his bed and fell asleep about 4pm. His light was on. His fan was off. He was so deep in sleep that I had difficulty waking him up. Piper kissed him saying loudly, “wake up, my prince!” and proclaiming him a sleeping prince charming. Finally awake, with help from his Yia Yia, he wasn’t in a good mood and he complained his neck was hurting. I, of course, immediately assumed he had meningitis. He has never, in his four and a half years fallen asleep without his routine, unless he’s been really ill. WebMD inspected and meningitis was ruled out, but I figured he had some unforseen sickness lurking around the corner.
The fever started sometime in the middle of the night. He was only complaining about his leg cramps, but his head was plenty hot. Meds on board and he was back to sleep. Four days later he seemed fine. He didn’t seem that sick to begin with, just exhausted and feverish and his eyes were oddly red and puffy looking, nothing he would ever complain about. He isn’t the only kid in the house, so waking up on Tuesday with her head hot and those same puffy eyes, I wasn’t surprised to find Piper sick.
Monday night I’d had some pretty good, strong contractions, but nothing I couldn’t talk through. I did think we were getting close and I was wondering how the sickness was going to change the new baby’s home coming. First thing Tuesday morning I made an appointment with the Pediatrician to get a professional opinion about a good course of action. With Piper looking just this side of horrible and Gideon proclaiming that he was fine, we went off to the doctor. Poppy drove us as I wasn’t feeling great and couldn’t pick up the little girl who didn’t want to change out of her pajamas to go.
Gideon’s throat was swabbed. Piper’s nose got the same treatment. His was negative (no step!). Hers was positive (Influenza A!). Our fantastic Peds doc prescribed Tamiflu for my parents, Jud and Piper. I was heading for my weekly appointment with the midwives in just a few hours, so we agreed that we’d let them prescribe for me. We also agreed that the kids should be kept separate from me and decided to let the kids go to our house and I would go to my parents house until everything was over.
Jud stayed with me at my parents’ house that night. My parents stayed with the sick kids. I contracted until 10ish and then abruptly stopped. The Tamiflu made me gag a bit. It made some of the others dizzy, but we were thankful to hopefully be preventing the onslaught of awful.
