Pither.com

What's worse than a cold?

Now I don't just mean a slight sniffle and a bit of a sore throat. I mean a cold that saps all of your energy, makes you generally ache and regularly wakes you up at night because you can't breath through your nose and breathing through your mouth is just too painful!

So, what's worse?

Obviously... having a small child who presumably feels about the same as you but doesn't understand what's going on or why.

This seems to lead to them generally screaming most of the time, quite often including during those few minutes when you actually feel just about well enough (or simply too exhausted for anything but) to sleep.

So when you're feeling really pretty rubbish and mainly just want to hide under the duvet, you actually have to get up, look after, change and attempt to play with a generally unhappy and screaming baby. 24 hours a day!

Could it get worse?

Of course it could - add one partner, who would normally care for you and help you through such tough and unpleasant illnesses. The only problem is, this cold lasts for quite a lot of days and they now have it too!

All in all, three people with no sleep and an unpleasant cold doesn't make for a very fun household!

Thank goodness colds don't last that long.

This morning Edward took the last dose in his course of antibiotics and he seems to have made a good recovery. Certainly our fear that he would be allergic to antibiotics appears not to be the case. :-)

The strange rash that doctors couldn't identify has also largely cleared up and will hopefully completely vanish in the next few days.

He has also been making up for lost time, being especially mischievous today - trying to play with cables, the Sky box and attempting to eat a radiator!

I am very pleased to announce that Edward is no longer a strange shade of dirty yellow and has instead developed a fairly pale skin tone.

His jaundice has lasted roughly four weeks, having started within a day or so of him being born. He can thank it for an extended initial stay in hospital, complete with some time under blue lights, plus two further trips back to hospital.

He has had many (I've lost count) blood samples taken from his heels and one much less pleasant looking one from a needle stuck into the back of his hand. He's also clocked up two (although it took three attempts!) urine tests.

Thankfully, after the early blood tests that led to the phototherapy, his blood tests have all come back clear.

The first of his urine tests however did return a positive for galactose, which is what led to the next test. Apparently false positives for this test are relatively common, and after a short physical exam, the doctor didn't seem too concerned. We still had a fairly worrying wait from Friday morning to Monday midday for the second result. Thankfully it was clear.

After all of that, the final result was that we just needed to wait a bit longer. Indeed some extra time, and moving Edward onto formula milk, has left him putting on weight and clearing the jaundice nicely. :-)

For once, and despite the inevitable worry involved, I have actually been quite pleased with the speed and thoroughness of treatment that we've received for this.