Bringing Up Bella Eveline

Immunizations.  A surprisingly controversial topic.  And one that mother’s who are against them amazingly find loopholes so their kids can go to school without them.  To me, it’s a no-brainer.  I can immunize my child against a set of rare diseases and guarantee she will never get them or what?  Cross my fingers and hope?  Come on.  Being as anti-germ as we are, we decided to do them.  All of them.  We travel a lot and Bella is exposed to a lot of new people and places, so we are playing it safe and getting her pumped with everything they can think of.  At this point, she’s pretty much protected from everything but athlete’s foot and emotional instability.  For those, she is on her own!

Immunizations come with warnings about side effects.  For the first two sets, our Princess came through like a champ.  Happy as a clam.  This time, however, she didn’t seem to feel so great afterward.  Our normally happy baby was fussy and crying.  A LOT.

SICK. Not a Happy Camper

However, we also tried out our first solid foods that same day.  Oatmeal.  Seemingly harmless.  Did she have an allergy to oatmeal and not a reaction to the immunizations?  No clue.  All I know is that after she had BOTH, her cheeks turned red like Santa Claus, she got rashy-looking spots on her feet and she had a low-grade fever.  The doctor we called (Dr. Amy’s on-call replacement) pretty much laughed at us when we told him her fever was 100.8 degrees.  Apparently it’s not alarming to a doctor until it’s over 104 degrees.  To me, 104 degrees is “holy shit the baby’s burning up and about to combust” temperature, but I defer to him.  He told us to give her some grape baby medicine to reduce her discomfort and bring down the fever.  Thank goodness she slept like a champ!

Although we still don’t really know what caused her to feel bad, her symptoms seem to be going away.  By last night, her cheeks were back to normal, fever subsided and feet were clear and kissable again.  It broke my heart to see our munchkin in pain.  I know this is the first of many little illnesses and I can check “sick” off our list of FIRSTS, but I don’t think it will ever get any easier!

Just in case her reaction was allergic, I have irrationally banned oatmeal from her diet (2 days is enough on solid foods, right?).  I know she needs the iron in the cereal, but can’t she just get it from her formula?  I don’t want to chance having her feel crappy again just for a few oats.  I think Keith is worried she will be going to college and I will still be keeping her from oatmeal!  So, instead, next week we will try RICE cereal – it’s got iron, too.  Wish us luck!