Poor Baby

Teething and colds hit babies at the same time, although Science says there’s no link. So what I’ve been assuming was the worsening of teething pains, turns out in fact to have been the onset of a cold; if it’s anything like the one that Pete and I are just developing, then Bernard has been suffering from a sore throat, and feeling lousy, for a few days now. Poor lamb.

On Wednesday evening I gave him his first shot of Calpol. Prior to Wednesday, he had only had Ashton & Parsons Infant Powders ["to soothe... troubles incidental to the teething period"], which are homeopathic. Calpol, for the non-parents, is a revolting pink strawberry-flavoured liquid containing paracetamol and sweeteners. Bernard doesn’t know what strawberries are, so he wasn’t much impressed; fortunately I had a plastic syringe to force it into him with.

I was trying to give him his bedtime feed, and he was refusing to lie peacefully across my knee and suck his way to sleep as he normally does – this would be about the third night in a row to feature fretfulness and flailing limbs – so I took a deep breath and administered the smallest possible dose of Calpol.

Ten minutes later he was in a glassy-eyed trance, fed calmly, and went to sleep for an hour and a half, after which he woke up with a streaming cold.

As Pete broke his toe the other night, he has been in charge of sitting in bed or on the sofa with the miserable infant, and we have all spent the entire weekend in our pyjamas, watching DVDs together.

Looking after a baby with a cold is hard for parents, because it’s so frustrating not to be able to assure him that it will only last for a few days. It’s hard for him to feed because his ears and throat and jaws all hurt [probably], and he can’t breathe through his nose, but he needs the good medicinal milk to make him better. He is crying much more than usual, and waking more in the night, which seems to be the only time he is comfortable feeding. This isn’t a major nuisance or anything; I feed him in the bed, and then we both go back to sleep there. I wake up sandwiched between my two favourite snorers.

There are gallons of dribble and snot, but constant face-wiping makes his nose and chin sore [as would not wiping it, I suppose]. The only teethers he wants to chew on are our fingers, and that will have to stop once the tooth appears; his bite is already quite vice-like. But the teething toys all seem too big and awkward for him to get into his mouth. Parental fingers are warmer, softer, and more biddable.

I hope he wakes in the morning a bit less snuffly and in a happier mood.