Chapter 3: You have the flu and so does your little one.

Chapter Three:

How to survive having the flu, while your child has the flu, single handedly- no joke! Well the key is to shoot yourself up with multivitamins and to just not care what people think about you and how you look. You will be living in your pajamas so try and make it look like somewhat casual Saturday clothing. You will also start to smell of vomit, and rotten milk and poop, so make sure you have plenty of perfume that you can tolerate with your extremely sensitive nose and also that won’t irritate your child's sensitivity- in my case my son has always been extremely sensitive to dust and has had respiratory issues, so take precautions if you child is alike.

Mainly, you want to be able to call a girlfriend that you can REALLY COUNT ON as you will not be fit to drive, and even if you want to drive and need to, you should have your friend do it. Also if you haven’t already signed-up for daycare this would be the perfect time. Most Mom’s I find that the moment they are away from their babies, do not go to get a pedi or manicure or even a massage they go string back to bed and get THEIR SLEEP. Yes you will suffer from sleep deprivation ALL THE TIME, which is why I strongly recommend getting as much as you can when you can and if not and are still breastfeeding, stop as soon as you can and get on medication that helps you battle insomnia and hyper activity as you will get wired once you take on all of this on your own on a daily basis. Remember you will be MAD and IRRITABLE more than usual when you are sick so PLEASE don’t count on people coming to take care of you, find a system a back-up plan because you will eventually get sick no matter how well JA! You think you are eating and how rested you should be since you no longer can go out and party every weekend or at least on Friday night, so make sure you find someone you can truly count on, if it is a cleaning lady who is very close to you and really loves you and feels badly for you, then call her, if it is an ex-boyfriend who still wants to get with you, maybe think twice about it, but even if he can’t put a diaper on right at least your baby will have something to shit or pee in while you try to get your fever down and force yourself to drink lots of chicken broth and fluids. And please do not expect anyone to bring you food or offer, their first instinct will be to ask if the baby is alright, you are always secondary. Then you are better off getting a delivery of chicken noodle soup as it will be a while and with favors in exchange by the time a family member comes through or someone who calls you their friend for life, blabla...

My favorite chicken noodle soup is Al'Gelato's on Robertson Blvd. they only take cash, but you can get a big soup for $6.00 and it comes with their delicious in-house baked bread. They also sell and amazing lentil soup and split pea is pretty good, if you go you should also pick-up a frozen big size soup that you can always defrost but have handy in the freezer for when you least expect.

THINGS YOU WILL NEED HANDY on the NURSE TABLE:

1. Infant Tylenol (depending on how young your baby is)

2. Infant Motrin (you will want to alternate between the two every 4-8 hrs, I learned this in the ER, YUP! I did end up driving myself and sick baby to the ER for him to be seen not me , with what health insurance?! and I spent the night there as we all do at some point in our lives and then took a conference call at 8AM without going to sleep- wait it gets better...

3. An assortment of flavors of Pedialyte- my son likes strawberry, orange and tropical fruit, but they have cherry, grape, bubblegum and just plain- which I don't recommend you should taste it... (incidentally the 99cents store now sells them in a small size but it helps cause all these drugs ain't cheap- but you will need them)

4. Lots of gallons of water.

5. Gell soft ice-packs and wash clothes in the freezer- helps bring down fever until the motrin and tylenol kick-in.

6. Humidifier and air purifier. Vicks has a pretty good one I inherited mine from the mother of my godchildren, but now they have these really neat design ones at Target.

7. Towels that you don't care to get stains on, cause there will be some vomiting and definitely staining due to the dyes in the medicine and Pedialyte.

8. Antibiotics-Amoxicilin will be your best friend, make sure if your baby is really sick that you do not leave the Dr.'s office that is your pediatrician even if they are the biggest hippie ever, make sure you get it or else you will be back again, and waste all this time that you cannot afford to waste when you are working trying to get your son his meds. I've noticed it's been trendy for Doctors in general to not give out antibiotics, I'm the most natural persona I know out there, but when you need them you need them and trust your Mother instincts.

9. Your baby will probably not want to eat and definitely not want solids if he or she is already eating, so you will want to water down your milk and depending on how congested he/she is you will want to just stick to the Pedialyte and keep giving him/her that as they MUST HYDRATE themselves no matter what. Even if it's just water, make sure they drink, eventually you can start them on a banana and some crackers, but gradually and then one day they will eat like a whale- then the SUN comes back-out!

Because of my son's Pediatrician's bad judgement one day, and he was sick soo many times this year and I have been sick more than my entire life this past year, I ended up going to two different urgent cares over the weekend and finally at the ER they gave me the prescription that I needed, but after they had diagnosed him with an ear infection and God knows what else in order to avoid giving antibiotics. At the end of the day these doctors really don't know what they are doing and they are just making a judgement call based on their "best" assessment of the situation at hand, but you as the mother and absent other parent must think about yourself and how their poor judgments will affect your life, so make sure you tell them what to do before you leave.