Issue #17: How our baby’s first illness turned into a parenting stress test... and we did not pass.

Reflections from a night we didn’t show up how we wanted to — and the honest lessons we’re taking with us.

Well, friends… Keira finally caught her first little virus. Nine months old. I’d love to say we were cool as a cucumber… but we were not. Not even close, haha. Now that we’re past it, I wanted to write about it.

If I had to grade us, I’d give us a compassionate D+ lol. And I say that now with a little laugh because we made it through, but in the moment, it was rough. We’re okay. She’s okay. But I really want to unpack this — mostly for myself, but also for anyone who’s been there and felt like, “Wait, why is this so hard?”

First off…
Parenting and working together? Hard at times.
Communicating clearly with your partner when you're both stressed? Very hard.
Navigating your baby’s first illness together? Next level. For us, anyways.

I honestly couldn’t tell you the exact sequence of events or how everything escalated so fast. We had just returned from our first airplane trip a couple days prior. Keira had been her usual bubbly self all day. I nursed her, did the bedtime routine, and we all snuggled into bed as normal. She seemed 100% fine. Then around 9 p.m., she woke up screaming — and I mean scream-crying in a way we’d never heard before.

She felt sooo hot. We grabbed one of those forehead thermometers, and I couldn’t get a consistent read. First it was 101, then 99, then 102. I mean, it was clear she had a fever, but I wasn’t certain how high in that moment until we used the rectal thermometer.

I stayed calm, because I knew that fevers are the body’s way of healing.

I also knew that I wanted to avoid Tylenol (Tylenol can deplete glutathione, which is something the body actually needs to fight off whatever it’s fighting).

So, if necessary, my go-to would be infant Motrin (dye-free)… which I had on hand.

I felt relatively prepared-ish. I had been building our medical kit filled with everything from infant medicine to homeopathic remedies since she was a newborn.

However, I didn’t want to rush to meds unless we really had to. But also… I didn’t want her to be miserable. So we waited a bit in an effort to not be reactive.

I tried nursing, lots of skin-to-skin, a cool rag on her neck…

Then the congestion was really kicking in. She was a bit snorty the past couple of days, but I didn’t think much of it.

We sprayed her nose with some saline and then tried to use the Nose Frida snot sucker and oh my god… it was like we were torturing her. It was horrible and very sad.

Then, Andrew and I started getting frustrated with each other. He wanted to just hold her down and do it. I didn’t want to force it and make her feel worse. Both of us were just hovering, and I felt this deep urge to make space for her — to back off and stop adding to her stress.

That’s when I snapped and said something fiercely like, “Step back. I don’t need you.”

And ugh… yeah. I didn’t mean it to come out like that. Yet in that moment, we weren’t aligned, and mama bear kicked in hard.