First Sick

A friend of mine (a mom in my mom’s group) recently had surgery. To help her out, other moms in the group were bringing her lunch and dinner. Fiona and I went to visit on Friday morning, to keep her company and help her out because she can’t lift her son right now and should be taking it easy. Friday night she sent me a text telling me that the whole family (son, husband, and she) was sick. They had fevers and were vomiting. Oh no!

Saturday morning we took an unusually long family nap in the morning – two hours or more. When I woke up, I felt groggy and hung over, even though I haven’t had an alcoholic drink in ages. I knew something was funny. I started to feel really tired and achy as the day wore on, so much so that I couldn’t hold Fiona up after I fed her before bed time. It turns out I had a mild fever, but the chills and aches were strong. When John brought Fiona to bed so I could feed her, she vomited her dinner. I took her to the couch so John could change the sheets, and I nursed her. She vomited again, this time it was a big one. Poor thing.

After that, John held her while I cleaned myself up and crawled back into bed. When she needed to eat in the middle of the night, John got up with me and helped me feed her. I had to side-lie (breast feed while lying down) on the floor because I could hold my head up. Today Fiona was a lot better. A little sluggish and whiny, but she is also teething, so that might explain it. She slept a lot. She also had diarrhea twice.

I have been feeling awful. My stomach is crampy and I feel nauseous. After a nice hot bath, I vomited as well. It seems I ate something with parsley leaves in it. It must be from a burrito I had Friday night. Now I feel a lot better. So far John has not had any symptoms. He’s been a real trooper, taking care of Fiona and me, and doing many loads of laundry.

It turns out that two other moms and babies also got sick after visiting the mother who I am now going to call Patient Zero. One baby has a slight fever and didn’t want to nurse, and the other vomited seven times, then had diarrhea the next day. All babies are doing well now, and the mommies are recovering as well.

I know one thing for sure, it is going to be a very long time before I give Fiona green peas for dinner again.

Here are some photos taken before we got sick:

I realize she looks very serious in all of these photos, but not only was she ill this weekend, she is teething as well. I know that a tooth is going to make its appearance very soon, probably within the next few days. This is making for one not so happy baby.