I’ve been saying for a while now that a cold is coming. Its struck a couple of the littles more than the others, and we’re rolling with it. As much as its a pain in the butt to have it cycle through all of our little kids, but thats part of having them! I don’t anticipate that eventually adding more kids to the mix is going to somehow make it easier, so we try to roll with the punches.
Today, we’ve joined the elite club of those with Hand Foot and Mouth. At least thats what we think. I spoke with a couple of my friends who are nurses yesterday, and called the Health Line this morning. While no one can confirm anything, its pretty clear. Rowan and Laela have HFM. I learned that my kids are among the smaller percentage in the statistics. Neither of them have spots on their hands or feet. Rowan complaints of itchy hands and feet, but his face is a dead giveaway. Also, he has an awful looking rash on his legs and in his diaper.
That rash on his legs wasn’t there yesterday at 1:00pm when we put him down for a nap, and when we got him up around 4:00pm, it was open and sore like this. He also has little spots in his arm pits, elbow pits, and on other parts on his upper body. This isn’t as common as the obvious spots on hands and feet, but its also not unheard of at all. Poor guy is such a good sport, but he had practically scratched his diaper off this morning 🙁 Unfortunately, he is still worsening.
Laela has fewer symptoms, but we’re still confident that she has the same sickness. She has a light rash on her face and a spot or two on the end of her nose, but she has her sores on her tongue.
We left her a water bottle for night, which we don’t normally do. We want to encourage her to drink all she can muster. When we got her up this morning, she had barely drank any, but it appeared that she had coughed up water and blood 🙁 She isn’t complaining about much beyond her tongue hurting. I’ll head out and find her a liquid antacid as soon as our local drugstore opens.
I think the biggest challenge will be pushing fluids. Not only do the sickies not have appetites at all, but swallowing anything doesn’t seem pleasing to Laela especially. We’ll do our best to get creative today, whether that means drinking smoothies or eating popsicles or whatever we can manage to sneak in there. We have busy days ahead, basically running interference. Our kids are big mouth kissers, drink sharers, toy eaters, and face lickers. Laundry is being done, bedding is switched, cleaning products are at the ready, and Brady and I are trying to keep positive attitudes. Which is a challenge. But we’re sure trying!!!
If anyone has any good tips or info on Hand Foot and Mouth, feel free to pass it on to these first timers! We’re prepared to hole up and let this virus run its course, but any helpful tips would be greatly appreciated!!
Lastly, I want to say a MASSIVE THANK YOU to those of you who have tolerated all of my annoying questions and have listened to me rant and get frustrated. You are very much appreciated and loved!