Poor little lady...

The baby just doesn't do so well with teething.  She gets these awful fevers (103 at times!!) and we've taken her in to the doctor (and the ER) before only to be told that it's nothing but the teething, and if she doesn't have other symptoms and we can manage the fever at home, keep her at home.

It doesn't help that today is well over a hundred degrees outside.  Thank goodness for central A/C!

But we had another tough night.  She woke up very early this morning and was crying, so we immediately gave her medicine to help with the fever... and then she proceeded to shake in my arms until the medicine finally kicked in and the chills went away as the fever went down.  It's just awful watching her like that, but once the fever goes down, she's happy, giggling, playing, etc.

I hear of some babies that hardly have any problems with teething, but that's certainly not our baby.  It really is tough on her.

And again, I'm thankful today that we didn't have the song and dance of "who stays home, can we send her to daycare, oh crap I have a meeting, can you postpone that, no I can't, shoot I need to work late and I have a deadline, can I have the car, no I need it, what if she needs to come home from daycare, i can't pick her up, well but you're closer, but i always have to do it and my boss is getting upset even though he's not saying anything, maybe I can take the conference call from the car on the drive home if she's not crying?"

I don't know how people do it.  Especially people like us - who have no extended family in the area that they can just call up and have watch a sick kid on a last minute's notice.  We have several people that we can call in an emergency that would take the baby for as long as needed, but nobody who we could call to take her on just a day when she's a little under the weather.

What do you do when the baby is sick?  And then what do you do to get caught up on work (especially difficult as a breastfeeding mom who has to figure out when/where to pump and constantly make sure the babies has enough bottled milk where ever she is!)  And how do you BOTH not fall behind at work and subsequently get cranky with one another because BOTH of you feel as if you are compromising your job performance... which is ultimately NOT good for the family.  (someone needs to be gainfully employed, after all!)

I don't know what you do, which is why I quit my job.  I never did figure it out, even though we tried SO GOSH DARN HARD.

But I know what we do now: we focus on getting the baby better and there's no discussion anymore - I have the car because Will walks to work, and I drop whatever else I had planned for the day (that wasn't really important anyways) and take care of the baby.

Poor thing.  These molars will eventually be done coming in, right?