Um, WHATsackievirus??

The start of a three day weekend. The advent of warm sunny weather after two straight days of rain. A very long "to do" list. A wedding to attend, which happens to be the first kid-free event we have planned to attend in almost a year. Mix all these ingredients together and what do you get? A sick baby, of course.

Poor Finn. He's been battling a cough and a runny nose for about two weeks. It was clearly on the mend - we had ceased dosing him with Benadryl at night, and he was sleeping through without any disruptive coughing fits to wake him. But Thursday morning we noticed the cough was making a comeback, and I received a call from daycare informing me that naptime was less than stellar. For them to call me about a nap, it had to be bad, and indeed, apparently his nap lasted all of 35 minutes. A far cry from the usual two + hours. The Benadryl came back out Thursday night, after we listened to cough after cough over the monitor. Friday I called the doctor. What if it's allergies? A sinus infection? Should we bring him in? We decided the best course of action was to watch and wait. Finn was acting himself, even if he did seem to have a leaky mucus factory in his nose. Friday night went well - very few coughing fits, and no antihistamine was needed. As Saturday morning dawned we thought we were in the clear, this cold was on it's way out. But a couple of hours later, and I'm sure there was no whinier kid in the world. Lots of crying and crankiness, and general exclamations of "hurts!" without an indication of where. Suddenly, the prospect of a three day weekend, when it means the doctors' office won't be open on Monday, didn't sound so good.

Thank goodness for Saturday hours, though! It was my #1 criteria in selecting a pediatrician for Finn. Our appointment was a 10:00 am, so we had about an hour and a half of time to kill before heading over there. While M. sat with Finn on one of the playground swings across the street, Finn actually fell asleep. Sitting up, with his bike helmet on. Whoa, my child just doesn't do that. He's definitely not a "sleep anywhere" kind of kid. So any doubt I may have had about whether I needed to take him to the doctors or not flew out the window.

We arrived at the appointment right on time, and within 5 minutes we were talking to the doctor (love her!). She made Finn, who was clutching his blankie and an Elmo doll, feel very comfortable while she checked him out. She looked in his ears and mouth, listened to him breathe, and took his temperature. The diagnosis - a sinus infection, as we expected (not sure how she knew this for sure, but I'm willing to buy it from the pain Finn's been feeling in his head, since he's not teething for a change). No ear infections, though it does look like one of his tubes is starting to work its way out :-(. The big surprise was that Finn also apparently has Hand-Foot-and-Mouth Disease, or coxsackievirus, in addition to his cold/sinus infection. He has sores in his throat, and a fever of 102. Poor baby!

A dose of antibiotic, a dose of ibuprofen, a short nap, and we already have a different child from this morning. As I type this, he's running around upstairs with his father, watching baseball on TV and playing with M.'s guitar. I'm sure that he will start to feel awful again as the medicines leave his system, but we can stay on top of it and, hopefully, rescue some of the weekend. No doubt he'll be in full health by Tuesday and ready to go back to daycare, where I'm sure he picked up the cold and HFMD in the first place.

Finn officially starts in the 2-year-old room on Tuesday, so it's a whole new set of germs for him to get used to. But I'm sure I'll have plenty more to say on THAT - transitions are my least favorite aspect of a daycare center and they definitely cause me angst!