Initial infection

So I thought Stephen was cutting some more teeth since he had a runny nose, was slobbering like a faucet and started waking up a few times at night. Boy was I wrong!

One night he had a fever and the next morning a fever blister. Sadly, that was just the beginning. The next morning there was another one and then three more ending with a total of 9. Since I've never had a cold sore - I had no idea what the initial infection was like. Wow - poor Stephen has had fevers every night and bleeding gums so bad that he wakes up every hour or two (when I'm lucky) and sometimes with his mouth full of blood. It's awful. He's in so much pain he can't eat very much either. Then all day he is extremely cranky which is so not his personality. When the pediatrician told me this would last 10-14 days I wanted to start crying.

It's been very difficult for me to watch him struggle through this. Course that may be because I'm exhausted myself. Waking every hour isn't so fun on a prego mama. As soon as Stephen starts wailing I have to move fast. If he cries too long then he wakes himself up too much and it takes forever for me to get him back asleep. But as soon as my feet hit the floor I have to go to the bathroom - even though I went an hour before. And as soon as I finally head back to bed then the baby decides he wants to wake up too and starts kicking up a storm. So needless to say, I don't fall back to sleep so easily.

Luckily today he woke up happy for the first time in over a week. And he's been happy all day. I think we are climbing out of this thing finally. His gums still look really sore and swollen but he's eating a lot better. His cold sores/fever blisters are looking nasty but I'm told that they are supposed to look like this before they go away. They are all yellow and crusty. Yuck!

Oh and here's an ironic thing, I had an appointment today to have Stephen's pictures taken at a studio. Yeah, that ain't happening. Can you imagine?! It's bad enough I took digitals.