Bad News and Good News

The bad news is, Matthew seems to have contracted the worst case of Hand-Foot-Mouth Disease (HFMD) that any of my children has contracted. The other kids got a high fever and a little rash on their hands and feet, but poor little Matthew has big, pimpley, blistery bumps around his mouth, on top of one foot, and here and there on his limbs. The fever started early Tuesday morning. Last night, starting about 9pm, he was so miserable that he didn't really sleep longer than a couple hours at a time. He screamed and cried intermittently until 11pm when I finally took him out to snuggle back to sleep, but he would NOT have it. He hopped off my lap in the darkness, made his way over to the Duplo bin and asked me to play with him. He was a total grouch, but I didn't want his screaming to wake up his new roommate Robert, and it was obvious he was not going to settle down to sleep with me, so I took him grocery shopping.

We really needed groceries, and his whiny, tired neediness all day had made a grocery trip pretty much impossible :( So I figured, "If I'm gonna be up for the next couple hours with this guy anyway, I might as well get groceries...and leave the rest of the kids asleep with their dad."

So, we put on our shoes and headed to the store. At 11pm. In our pajamas.

Matthew was on his best behavior until the very end when he just couldn't wait one minute more for the free horsey ride. Tears, drama, and one tired mama. Whew! But at least I didn't have three other kids with me ;)

So we come home, put the groceries away, and I ask Matthew if he is ready for bed. He says yes. He takes us down the hall to his room. In the pitch black. I lay him down and crawl into my own bed. It is 12:15 by this point. At 12:20, Matthew is screaming and crying and yelling again. I throw my covers off, pluck him from his bed, buckle him into the car, and we take a joy ride around the block before I park the car in our driveway and just wait. He screams. He cries. He starts shouting at me, "No! No!" and then "Out!" (which means "go away"). He's SO angry. Then he calms down a little, I give him the pacifier, and he falls asleep. At 1:15, I gingerly take him from his seat and carry him to bed. The moment his head hits the mattress, he's awake. And angry.

I go to my bed, thinking he'll settle in a minute or two. Nope. Then I remember the pack-n-play and our guest room on the other side of the house. Brilliant! I put him in there, all screamy and mad. When you shut the guest room door and my own bedroom door, you can't hear anything that room. But, I end up feeling bad that I wouldn't be able to hear him if something really went wrong...barf, choking, stab wound...so I sleep on the couch where I and only I can hear his cries. I don't remember much of what happened between that moment and 3am when I awoke to more crying. I traded places with Bobby and he handled the whole mess until 6am when Matthew's cries again ripped me from sleep.

Apparently, Matthew's feet hurt/itched/ached so bad this morning that he couldn't walk :( Bobby tells me that he gave the babe another dose of ibuprofen and put him back to bed.

Are you ready for the good news, yet? Kids only seem to get this particular virus once. Yay! And the second I saw his high fever with no other symptoms, I suspected HFMD. Hee hee! I was actually relieved to see the rash starting on his hands and feet. It meant this whole fiasco was something known, something temporary, and something totally harmless to the rest of this family. Whew.

But we're still in quarantine from any other families with children 0-5 years old. That's okay. I could use a quiet day at home after a night like that :(

Matthew has had his fingers in his mouth a lot more lately. Teething, maybe? Well, it certainly exposes him to large doses of a greater variety of microbes :)