Lessons in Motherhood

Last week I went through what I may deem the toughest part of motherhood to date. Isabelle suddenly came down with high fever. It was really sudden, she was bright and chirpy during the day, but when we came back from church, she suddenly turned cranky and we found she had a mild temperature. Anyways, I thought the fever would just last 1 day and wasn't so panicky. I brought her to the paed at Thomson Medical on Sunday morning to get some nurofen (Yea, i am so underequipped with fever medicine in the house. The only bottle of paracetamol I have is from her vaccination. Isabelle has never had high fever for 18 months & 2 weeks of her life!). The fever came down slightly, only to start spiking up and up on Sunday night. By then I was quite panicky, and called D who also panicked, and I decided to ask my aunt to accompany us to KKH. It was probably the worst decision I have ever made. We ended up waiting till close to 1am, cos they insisted on doing a urine test for Isabelle. Arghghghg, finally we walked away, cos Isabelle just has no urine!

The lessons I learnt
(1) A high fever never goes away within a day, so don't panic.
(2) Know the frequency and how to administer fever medication. Obviously I had no experience, so I freaked out when nurofen was not working. Following up with the paed the next day, I discovered that paracetamol and nurofen belong to 2 separate classes of medicine and can be taken one after the other as long as the appropriate intervals are maintained.
(3) Nursing a sick baby with high fever on your own is really tough. Think I went through 2 days & 2 nights with hardly any sleep that I was almost breaking down. Maybe I have just been too fortunate all this while cos Isabelle has been rarely this sick. We've gone through bronchitis (serious, but she was actually still active and with good appetite) and vomitting, but seriously high fever is the worst! Seeing her so limp and lethargic really made me feel so helpless.

On a side note, I lost more than 1 kg over this high fever saga, which I am absolutely pleased (think I've been eating too much lately)...but NOOO, I don't want my baby to be this sick again.