Fever All Through the Night

It was midnight when I heard the cry of a returned fever again. Last night was the third night in a row I was up with Finny in the middle of the night dealing with this terrible reaction he was having to his MMR shot. When I went in, he was just beside himself, restless, tired, and achy. I tried everything. I rocked him. He wanted nothing to do with it. I took him downstairs and offered him water. He pushed it out of my hand. I sat down on the couch and turned on Thomas. He looked at me like, “Seriously? We already watched thirty-five of these episodes today.”

I brought him back upstairs and paced the hall with him, back and forth, back and forth, at least twenty times. Then, I dug deep into a bag of old reliable tricks. Tricks I haven’t used since he was an infant. I sat in the rocking chair and laid him vertically across my knees cradling his head in my hands, rocking him back and forth on my knees. His eyes shut almost instantly. But his head was so heavy. Literally. He was too heavy; I couldn’t sustain it, so I tried to gingerly move him to his crib. He fussed and whined, so I lay down on the hardwood floor beside his crib and stuck my hand between the rails. He fussed and whined and I prayed with tears rolling down my cheeks, “Please God, heal this baby.” Three nights of this, I couldn’t take it anymore. Earlier in the day, he had turned blue. Enough was enough already. He was fully crying now. I picked him up and brought him into our bedroom. I hated to wake up David, but thought maybe he would sleep between us. He just cried harder. I took him back into his room and put him on the changing table to put him in cooler pajamas at David’s suggestion. He cried and cried and I lost it. I burst into tears. And do you know what Finny did then?

Finny laughed.

He laughed his ass off. The harder I cried, the harder he laughed. He could barely keep his paci in his mouth he was laughing so hard.

David came in to comfort me and then he saw it too. Soon the three of us were laughing together in Finny’s room at two in the morning. We’ll do anything for a laugh around here, but Finny’s tactics seem a little extreme.

But, prayer answered, I thought. How sick can he really be if he is still able to see the hilarity in my pain?

Shortly after that I was able to rock him back to sleep in my arms standing in the middle of his room. Today was better. We took good naps and the fever was down. He got the promised rash that the doctor indicated he would get, but he toddled about today and even attempted to play a little bit. I hope it just continues to get better from here; my pain might be laughable, but his pain is another story. It’s tragic and heartbreaking and I want it to go away.