No pictures this time. No time!! We've been in sheer survival mode. Thank goodness I got over bronchitis...because Jason's flu hung around a lot longer than any of us anticipated! He ended up running 102.5 that Thursday evening, then he'd have a low grade fever each evening. He also developed a cough. Normally, I'd have been okay with being around him having the low grade fever, but since I have pretty low immunity due to the new little life in my belly, I wasn't taking any chances. So we only saw Daddy from afar for over an entire week. I do NOT see how single working parents do it, especially with more than one kid. Reid was actually really good about Daddy being in the house and not getting to see him. I tried to explain it was so Daddy didn't get us sick and so we didn't give him any more germs. He would rather not see Daddy than wear the masks I'd gotten us (even with me drawing mustaches on them :) One day, Jason came downstairs with his mask to get dinner to take back upstairs and eat in his room...Reid promptly said, "I told Daddy to go upstairs. He needs to go back to his room!" Poor Daddy. Needless to say, I was absolutely thrilled when Monday was a normal day...Jason went to work and was able to be around us and help out that evening. Reid's bath time is pretty awful for me because it hurts so bad to lean over, but especially for the tub. Jason had pretty much taken that over for me, especially when he realized there'd be no way for me to do bath time after the c-section.
Tuesday was a normal day, too, until a rude awakening at about midnight. We were all tired and had gone to bed early, but Reid began screaming bloody murder. Upon entering his room, he was vomiting all over his bed. Just great. I stripped him and swept him to the bathtub while Jason took all the nasty bedding downstairs to rinse it before chunking it into the washing machine. This scene repeated three more times, albeit it was pretty much just bile coming out of my poor little guy. Reid hates throwing up more than anyone I know (even me!), and I think he's only had one vomiting illness episode in his little life so far. I pretty much didn't get back to sleep until 4am...when I was pretty sure I wouldn't be awakened once again. But teachers don't have the luxury of simply calling in sick. We have to figure out someone to come teach our class, a way to get lesson plans to school (not an easy feat when kinder plans must be minute by minute!), and convey that message to both our team and administrators. I will usually notify my parent list, too, just so they know why little Johnny didn't have the note taken out of his binder or anything written about the day (even though I instructed the sub what to do). You end up paying for it for several days afterward, attempting to catch up on whatever the clueless sub didn't do or re-establishing classroom rules and procedures. I couldn't get a hold of my long term sub--she would have been fantastic and I could've just emailed her general stuff since she knows how my classroom runs. I also couldn't find her in the sub system, so I figured it's because she recently got married and has been slowly changing her name on everything. So I tried entering several more of our usual, great subs into the system...but they were unavailable. I cringed as the system began calling random people, for this was a day where we had to flip our entire schedule for a group of visiting administrators to be able to see math and science/social studies being taught at certain times. (Yeah...because THAT's real authentic) Sure enough, my sub ended up being awful. But I didn't care at that point. I just wanted Reid to feel better. He was quiet, snuggly, and kind of pitiful in the morning. We watched Planes (twice!) and he was able to keep down crackers and little sips of lemonade and water spread out through the morning. He wanted a bagel ("with cream cheese!" um, no!) and kept that down, so I thought we were on the right track. He took a wonderful nap, which actually allowed me to do a lot of nesting around the house to prepare for the baby. When he woke up, though, he was a little bit "punk" again and didn't want to eat or drink. As soon as Jason got home, I ran up to school before my badge wouldn't let me in the building and left plans. Thankfully, my long term sub could come in for the next day. I am down to about 16 days of leave (contrary to popular belief, teachers get ZERO paid maternity leave...you are just able to take up to 12 weeks off due to FMLA, so we must save up our sick and personal days over the years to prepare for babies. But when you already have a kid and you work in a germ factory, many of those days are spent for your illness and/or your child's.) and obviously trying to conserve them, so I opted for a 1/2 day of leave, thinking I could have my sub stay all day if Reid ended up being sick again. In the meantime, Jason's cough was getting worse, so as soon as I got home from school, he went to Urgent Care. The doctor even seemed a bit surprised...pneumonia, a complication of the flu. Fortunately, Jason hasn't felt just horrible, but he sounds pretty rotten and the coughing had gotten to be a problem--he had to leave his meetings a few times on Thursday due to the cough. The doctor gave him something to quiet the cough and a nice, strong antibiotic.
He woke up all smiles, wanting breakfast, and went potty all by himself. So I went ahead and took him to Holli's and let him go to his school so he wouldn't miss his Valentine's party. He was his normal self at both places and begged for his normal dinner favorites that night. I gave in and let him have one spinach nugget because I was pretty sure he was sick of carbs and applesauce. Sure enough, at 10:30, just after Jason and I had gotten to sleep, Reid began screaming and he vomited once again. Just my (lack of!) luck. Since Jason had pneumonia anyways and needed rest, he found a way to stay home on Friday and allow me to go for the Valentine's party day...which I would never, ever wish on any sub!! Between a different schedule, hyped up kids, Valentine's festivities, and a rude parent note (I swear that nearly sent me into labor in itself!!), I was done!! Awful day. Jason took Reid to the doctor and he (thankfully!) tested negative for strep, which has been manifesting itself as a stomach bug at my school lately), and the pediatrician didn't think there was any way it was the flu since he hasn't run any fever. We've only been letting him have small, bland meals since then and the doc gave him a prescription for an anti-nausea/vomiting medication. Apparently a lot of folks have a similar virus because we had to go to three pharmacies yesterday to fill it! We are hopeful that they are both feeling better soon and that baby Carter and I manage to stay well. I don't want to be in the O.R. by myself!!
I am soooo ready to meet this little guy. I would be completely okay for him to come ANYtime. I'm sick of the stress of school, and quite honestly I am so exhausted and hurt so badly most of the day and night that I'm not really "me" anyway. My sub would be much better at this point!! She's wonderful! The rib pain/back pain is pretty unbearable, but there's nothing I can do. I think this is going to be a l-o-n-g kid...and the doctor I saw on Tuesday estimated that he was already 7.5 lbs then! Please pray for us all to hang in there. Reid asks me first thing every morning, "How long until baby brother comes out?!" so I think he's ready, too. Thankfully, tomorrow is a staff development day, meaning I can sit, which is still not remotely comfortable, but I can kind of mentally check out and hopefully be fine, lol, rather than having to be "on" every second of the day...plus I can take a tinkle break whenever I need to!! I am thankful Carter will be evicted one week from tomorrow--a definite date has been nice to have this time. But if he decides to come earlier, I am totally fine with that, especially given how big he is already supposed to be and he's officially full term. I'm thankful we had a relatively normal weekend as a family of three, were all able to go to church this morning, and that we finally have nice weather. Maybe that will kill some of these nasty germs!
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