Nothing can be scarier than when your child is sick. I recently went through this with our daughter Paloma. She had a typical winter head cold and a bit of coughing that quickly turned into an early stage of Pneumonia and a double ear infection.

It happened fast, and she really gave us no warning. Unlike many people’s children, when my daughter gets an ear infection she doesn’t pull her ear or do anything to indicate she is suffering.  From our point of view, she just seems a bit grouchier than normal.

It started on a Sunday after going to bed, when Paloma was waking up every 2 hours complaining and mildly crying, but going back to sleep relatively soon after. This happened again the next night. My husband and I figured she was stuffed up, and just wanted her head elevated a bit with another pillow. Another possibility that we thought of was teething; she’s been suffering while getting her molars in but refuses to let us look into her mouth to see how they are progressing.  Pneumonia and a double ear infection were definitely not on our list of suspect ailments.

Monday night went much the same as the previous night, but on Tuesday morning she was fine, but my husband and I were exhausted. A friend of mine told me I looked like a zombie. Two nights without sleep will definitely do that to you. Still watching her run around I thought maybe – just maybe – we would get some sleep that night, and pressed on with my day.  Surely, my husband and I thought, Paloma was getting better.

Early that afternoon, I put her down for a nap and 15 minutes later she was awake and crying.  This actually was typical behavior for our Prima Donna daughter:  naps are not her favorite activity.  Knowing from experience that she wouldn’t go back to sleep, I turned on her favorite TV show: “Bubble Guppies”.  While she did quiet down, I noticed her breathing was extremely rapid. She also felt somewhat warm … and after taking her temperature, I discovered a fever of 102 degrees. Time to call the Pediatrician!

Thankfully for us Paloma was screaming so loudly while I was on the phone (again, typical Diva behavior:  how dare mommy pay attention to somebody else), which must have made the nurse think that she needed to fit us in:  “If you can get here ASAP I can get her seen”. On the way out the door, I grabbed Paloma’s two favorite stuffed dogs, just in case there was a shot in her future and she would need something to hug.

As I said at the beginning, the diagnosis ended up being the beginning of pneumonia and double ear infection.  As I imagine most parents would, I felt completely guilty about not having caught it earlier. The doctor told me I couldn’t have, since he thought Paloma has an “incredible pain tolerance” because of her being merely grouchy with all that was going wrong. 

I guess I’m happy to hear that for her sake, especially if she goes down the road parenthood one day; childbirth should be a lot easier for her than it was for me! But seriously, the “high pain threshold” is definitely not an asset when your child is unable to tell you what is wrong with them.  So, we learned something new:  when our child acts just a bit more grouchy than usual and gets up a few times during the might, it may be something mild … or it could be something major.  You really have to watch them on an hour-by-hour basis, fight the assumption that everything will be OK with a bit more sleep, and be ready to “spring into action” and get them to the doctor.

Our pediatrician decided to give Paloma a “breathing treatment” in the office and give her an antibiotic injection. For the breathing treatment, Paloma screamed bloody murder while the mask was over her face … I was so glad that I grabbed her favorite stuffed animals “Ahzoo and Puggy”, since I don’t know how she would have reacted without them to clutch a hold of.   When it was finally over, she was so tired that she fell asleep in the office on top of the dinosaur-decorated exam table. My heart just broke.

But later, she took her shots like a champ! We dropped by the pharmacy to pick up her prescriptions then headed home. The whole evolution began at 2 p.m. and ended at about 6 p.m. I am happy to report that by 7 p.m. she was running around the living room chasing her big brother, with steady improvement over the next day.  So the medicine definitely worked wonders!

Parenting is a learning curve, and it seems to be different for each kid.  No two children, even siblings are alike. For example, my son never had an ear infection, but Paloma seems to be an ear infection magnet. My son will vomit when he feels sick, while Paloma never has.  When he has felt bad, he was able to communicate this in some manner, no matter what his age.  This is not so true with our daughter.  What I have learned now is that if Paloma has trouble sleeping through the night, we are going to seriously consider going to the pediatrician the next day … and if this happens two nights in a row, we will go. 

I guess the moral of the story is: as parents we need to let the guilt go; we have to accept that there is no way to read our children’s mind, and when they aren’t able to speak (or don’t have the vocabulary to accurately express themselves) we are very limited in understanding what clues they give us.  We do the best we can, and have to be wary of the “feel good” assumption that everything will just get better tomorrow.