I can't even imagine!

Yesterday Abilene had a constant fever.  I did everything I could to keep to down.  We rotated the regular meds and went to the chiropractor; we still could not keep her fever under 101.  It was exhausting and terrifying all at the same time.  My boys have been super sick before, but they were old enough to tell me what was wrong.  They never ran a fever when they were under a year old (other than a low grade teething fever).  So this was all very new to me.  When Max has a fever he walks up to me and say, "mama I think I have the bieber!"  When Max has a fever you can tell just by looking at him because his cheeks get super red.  When Jerry has a fever he gets really cranky and lays around, but he never carries the fever in his head, you have to feel his back to see if he has a fever, its kinda weird.

Abilene's fever caught me completely by surprise.  She was taking a nap and sleeping longer than usual, so I walk in to check on her and immediately notice the poor princess is burning up!  Sure enough, 103!  Just an ear infection, no worries, right?  All you have to do is keep the fever down.  By then time it was time for bed I was pretty stressed about her fever.  I set my alarm to go off for every 2 hours to check her fever and see if she needs any more medicine.

Between the alarms I couldn't sleep.  It got me to thinking that there are moms out there who do this every single day for most of their life.  They may never get a whole night of sleep again.  Jerry is so very small and at times crazy cranky, so the poor kid has been in and out of the doctor for the last year trying to figure out what is wrong.  Basically, the kid has crazy blood sugar.  Anyways, he is doing better for the time being, but what I am getting at is that with all these trips to the doctor I have been able to meet these amazing mothers who are having to deal with small children that are affected by type 1 diabetes.  These mothers are truly superheroes!  They never get to sleep through the night, constantly getting up to check on their child's blood sugar.  I just got a small glimpse of what that would be like checking Abilene's fever.  All I had to do was place my head on her head to make sure she didn't have a fever.  These mothers have to go into their child's room every single night, multiple times a night, and just praying that their child is still alive!  They have to do much more than check for a fever and it is so much more scary.  I can't imagine going into my child's room every night and just praying that we gave just the right amount of insulin to make it safely though the night.

I am sure there are other illness/diseases/sickness/etc that cause mothers to not be able to sleep through the night (which is probably just a small worry in the grand scheme of things), but this is the only one I have had close encounters with.  Anyways, that was just a thought I had today, again as I laid Abilene down to take a nap and thought about taking a nap myself, but couldn't bring myself to do it because of a slight fever.