A whole Lot of Sickness

I think December is the cursed month of sickness for our family.  Last year, it was the flu during Eric's finals which left me working from home with Jared in the sling and Mallory sleeping on the counter. 

 This year was very similar only Eric wasn't in finals.  This all of course happens in the one week the  daycare closes for the year. I had arranged for a college student home from break to watch the kids so I could work.  This was a nice little insight into what it would be like to have a nanny.  While it was nice not to have to waste 2 hours of my day driving, it reinforced that it would not work for us to have a nanny at the house while I worked.  If Jared knows I'm around, he cries until I get him. 

 This meant I had to sneak around the house and whisper on the phone so he did not know I was there.  For the first two days I worked in our bedroom.  However, on Wednesday Eric came home with a fever of 105.5 after taking ibuprofen (which he was convinced he was getting brain damage and I was convinced it was just the flu and that he just needed to sleep it off).  I wasn't about to be in the same room as him all day breathing in his germs (so loving, right?  I could never be a nurse who sees sick patients), so this left the guest room.  I don't really move around a lot during the day, but not being able to leave the guest room made me feel confined and it was awful. 

Anyway, on Thursday Eric still could not get out of bed and at about 10am Mallory fell asleep in the playroom with the sitter.  This was not normal so I took her temperature and sure enough she had a fever.  Not wanting to subject the sitter to all the germs since she was starting a new a job the following Monday, I let her go and gave up on working for the rest of the day.

Luckily, Thursday was also the day Mallory was scheduled to have her stitches out. We headed to the doctor just after lunch and turns out, she had strep throat. This actually ended up being a blessing in disguise because she was fever free and acting back to normal on Friday (of course after a long night of her being up all night).  Eric also got some antibiotics and he was feeling better within a couple days.  I felt bad for telling him it was probably just the flu and to suck it up when he could have been on antibiotics earlier, but what do I know?

Needless to say, we were all exhausted, so we spent the weekend doing a whole lot of nothing.  Although I wasn't sick, I think my body just kind of shut down after the month of December and the stress of the week.  Thankfully Eric was able to get up with the kids in the mornings so I could get a few extra hours of sleep. 

I also learned that it is uncommon for children under 3 to get Strep Throat.  Hopefully we are in the clear and Jared stays healthy!

On a side note, there should be some kind of rule against parents of young children getting sick (or if I'm making rules up there should just be a rule against getting sick), it's just not right.