Poor sick chicken...

I think that looking after a sick child is probably one of the most "unfun" things about motherhood... the vomit, the fevers, the cranky, unhappy child... for the most part these are relatively easy to deal with... but the worrying! I really hate that sense of helplessness and worrying about your child...

This afternoon Beth woke up from her nap with a fever... she actually was quite listless, so I managed to take her temp (under her armpit) which was about 38.1, which means she was probably at about 38.5... I didn't really need to take her temp to figure out she had a fever though... she was really burning up and I could see she was struggling to move and even to sit up. So after a dose of neurofen, she spent a quiet afternoon lying on her little sofa in front of the TV... She actually perked up a bit late afternoon and gathered enough energy to go outside and water her plants (can't let her plants die!)... but by evening, she'd gone all flat again and she actually fell asleep in the beanbag at about 6:45pm... She looked exhausted and was completely out of it. I moved her so she was lying on her little fold out sofa and she slept there until about 7:30pm, when she woke up... managed to get her to eat a little... a bit of bread, a bit of watermelon and a bottle of milk. But then we gave her dose of neurofen and she gagged and *everything* came back up... So I had to put her in the bath to clean up the vomit (I had actually managed to catch most of the vomit on her top and on my top and pants, so we didn't have to clean the rug). She had been burning up again, so the bath actually brought her temperature back down, but she got the chills really badly... I got her out of the bath, dried and dressed her and we had a second attempt at the neurofen, which stayed down this time and followed it with a decent drink of diluted fruit juice. And then put her to bed... she was still shaking with the chills... hoping that settles down soon...
I'm off to bed, 'cos I'm in for a restless night... Even if she doesn't wake, I know I'm going to be going in to check on her to make sure she's ok. Here's hoping tomorrow is a better day...