sickness and love

Again. I swear one step forward, two steps back. I need to keep my baby healthy but I don't know how. Her immune system sucks, thanks to me-the mother. Growing up I was constantly sick, my chart at the pediatrician's office was easily 2 inches thick; I was in there at the very least once a month from the time I was born until I was 12. Emory is following closely to that.

Her immune system crashed hard last March when she was diagnosed with Croup. We battled that for a month. We had various viruses and colds over the next few months but nothing major. In October she got Pneumonia and we battled that for a month and 2 rounds of antibiotics. We had a stomach bug in december and have been fairly okay until last thursday.

Emory woke up with a 102 degree fever on Thursday morning. I kept her home from school and she was just tired, feverish and had a cough. I figured we were going to battle croup again since the cough she has is very seal like. Her fever never broke, as soon as the ibuprofen wore off it was back up to 102. So into the doctor she went on Friday. Jason called me at work when they were done at the doctor's office. She has Influenza A and a double ear infection. "How fabulous"  I thought. The year I give her the flu shot because she's going to be in preschool and she gets the flu anyway and it's the real legit flu. I don't think I have ever even had Influenza and I have had just about every virus a child can have. The doctor's office called me Saturday morning and we threw strep onto the list of things Emory has. She's miserable. I'm miserable.

She seems okay during the day but at night the cough fest starts. She's too young for cough medicine and too young to understand that she is so sick. I feel horrible for her. As a mom it's so hard to watch her go through this. I also feel awful when I get frustrated with her. Tonight she has coughed so hard she's thrown up six times, yes SIX times. She's getting the muck out thankfully. What I'm frustrated with is the fact that she has resorted to grunting at me instead of using words. She has 100's of words that we worked so hard for her to use and she needs to use them but she won't. She's started flapping way more than usual. I know she can't help these things but when I'm caught in the moment I don't know what else to do but yell. Yelling doesn't do anything but make my mood worse and rile Emory up more. I'm exhausted from all of this and I'm sure that's not helping any. We're on day 5 of illness. I'm physically and emotionally spent. I also have a cold from being near her so I'm not feeling 100% anyway.

Thank God for Jason; he's been so amazing through all of this. He's been making sure she gets ibuprofen or tylenol every 3 hours and her antibiotic every morning and night. I seriously don't know what I'd do without him. I've been working for the past 5 days and he's been off for the majority of the time. He's probably exhausted but he keeps going and hasn't complained once. He's also been cleaning the kitchen and doing the laundry that I have neglected for quite sometime. How in the hell did I get so lucky with him? I will probably never know. I know I don't show my appreciation for him nearly enough so Jason, if you ever read this, I appreciate everything you do for our family and I thank you! I love you so much more than I can even express to you in words.