And I thought diaper rash was bad.

Well, silly me for complaining about diaper rash when, as it turns out, a far worse fate awaited us. Henry has been battling a respiratory infection for 5 days now. I would refer to this illness as a cold, but the term cold doesn't seem strong enough. We know that it is an infection because I caught it and now we are both suffering through it. A lot of coughing, lethargy, and low fevers. Henry hasn't been able to attend daycare this week so that has meant schedule juggling for Mike and me. We are lucky that we have flexible job hours and work environments. Most days this past week, I stayed at home and cared for Henry in the mornings while Mike went to work. He returned home in the afternoon to care for Henry while I worked from home. Thursday morning presented a special challenge because we both had to be at work early, and we both had presentations. Our neighbor Lillian helped us out of this jam, and she took care of Henry on Thursday morning.

On Tuesday, I took Henry to the pediatrician. Henry's lungs sounded a little wheezy to the doctor so he gave him an albuterol breathing treatment right there in the office. This treatment seemed extreme to me because the only experience that I ever had with albuterol breathing treatments was a certain someone who had to be taken to the ER every few months during college for asthma attacks. I won't mention any names but she was my college roommate, she reads this blog, and she is a dancer in Chicago. And her first name rhymes with Mickey. The doctor prescribed three breathing treatments a day for Henry. A breathing treatment consists of one of us holding Henry while the other one holds a plastic tube to H's face. He needs to breathe in a mist of albuterol to open his lungs. Surprisingly, Henry seems to enjoy the treatments. I thought he would hate it. I would post a picture of H receiving a breathing treatment, but, besides that being a potential violation of his patient rights as defined by HIPPA, Henry looks unhappy in the picture. He also looks unusually small in the picture (because of the angle of the photographer) so the overall effect is one of a small infant receiving oxygen through a plastic mask and that image is just too sad and overly dramatic for posting.

The good news is that Henry seems to be doing better - fewer coughing fits, longer periods of rest at night, and no more fevers.