first cold

hey all.  well, less than 2 weeks into daycare and daxon's got his first cold.  it's just a little case of the stuffies - no fever, and he's not completely miserable, but he's breathing like a bulldog.  over the weekend, he slept a lot, as i think his little body was trying to fight it off - saturday night he slept for almost 13 hours straight!  anyway, i'm doing my best to try to keep him unstuffy.  i have been using the nosefrida religiously.  dax is definitely not a fan of the process, but as soon as i'm done using it, he calms right back down.  that thing gets a lot of snot out of there!  it is unbelievable.  gross, but unbelievable.  i put a few drops of breastmilk in each nostril before i use it, to help loosen things up in there first, then suck away.  i think maybe tonight before his bath i will run a steamy hot shower for a few minutes to get the bathroom all steamed up - that supposedly helps, too.  they also say to nurse them in a steamy bathroom, but he always falls asleep nursing, and i wouldn't want to have to nosefrida him (what, that's totally a verb) after nursing - he'd completely wake up again.  and be pissed.

i sent some saline nasal drops and a bulb syringe with him to daycare, but sasha (who cares for him) said he didn't seem too bad yesterday.  which makes me nervous that he's allergic to something in our house (i do need to vacuum...).  i will be heartbroken if he turns out to be allergic to padfoot.  so as cruel as it seems, i really am hoping it's just a little cold and will go away soon.

for the most part, though, he seems to be handling it ok.  we were up last night from 1-2:30, partially because i was being stubborn and refused to nurse him.  i did not want to start that habit.  so initially i went down and just put the paci in his mouth and rocked him for about 25 minutes until i thought he fell back asleep.  i put him back in the crib and left the room, but 5 minutes later he was awake and crying again.  so i went back down and just put the paci in his mouth but didn't pick him up.  i was in there for about 10 minutes until he fell back asleep and i went back to bed.  that lasted 15 minutes and right when i was falling back to sleep, he was awake and crying again.  so then i checked his diaper (just a little wet) and decided to nosefrida him.  which, of course, pissed him off, so then he was really crying, but he did sound a little better.  so i attached him to the boob and he fell asleep after about 10 minutes.  i put him back to bed and he slept fine until i had to wake him up at 6.  so i know to a lot of people one wake up in the night sounds like nothing (and some people would be thrilled with that), but for us, after about 6 weeks of sleeping through the night, it was a rough night.  and a rough morning - mommy skipped the half-caf coffee and went straight to full-caf, high sugar starbucks caramel machiatto.  but lesson learned - if we wake up again tonight, don't be so stubborn - suck the snot, stick him on the boob, and get him back to sleep!

honestly, i'd anticipated our first daycare disease would be much worse and happen much sooner.  if this is all we get, then i'll be thrilled.  i'm really hoping that since he's starting daycare at the end of cold/flu season, we'll miss a lot of the biggies.  fingers crossed!