Currently it's allergy season in Texas. Actually, most of the year is allergy season, but right now they are really bad. There has been a light layer of yellow pollen on everything over the last week or two. Many people who never had allergies before they move to Texas get them within a year or two of arriving, they're that bad. Amazingly, I still don't have them after 16 years, but I do get at least two bad allergy-induced sinus infections every year. It just goes with the crazy weather.
One morning last week Amanda woke up and her nose was completely crusted over in green snot. Okay, not completely crusted over, there was a tiny bit of room for more, thick, wet green snot to come out. She didn't have any other symptoms besides a cough, which I figured was from all the drainage, so I waited to take her to the doctor. That night she also had a slight fever, so I took her in the following day. I told the nurse practitioner that I had given her a little Benadryl at night to help with her cough and to clear up her nose. She thought I was crazy and told me I really didn't need to be giving her Benadryl. Then she checked Amanda. Nothing wrong with her, a little irritation in the throat from drainage, and hmmm, maybe you should be giving her the Benadryl. Looks like she has allergies. I was amazed. They say you need to be exposed to the season a couple of times for an allergy to kick in, but when could that have happened? In the fall? Sarah started taking allergy medicine pretty young, but not this young. I had been giving her Pediacare every night for three months because she was always congested. When I told the doctor he said if she needed it that long she wasn't sick, it was allergies. Really? Since I've never had them I didn't really know what to look for.
The nurse practitioner couldn't find anything else wrong with Amanda and the fever never really progressed or came back, so allergies it is. I started giving her 1/2 teaspoon of Benadryl every night to fight the congestion. Around that time she started sleeping through the night. Finally! I didn't put two and two together at first, but then I started to wonder. Is she sleeping through the night because I'm drugging her? Or, are the drugs finally making it possible for her to sleep all night because she can breathe? Or, it is just a coincidence? With babies, there are never coincidences.
Yesterday her runny nose seemed to be clearing up so I decided to forgo the Benadryl at bedtime. I don't want to get her hooked, and she seemed to be doing better. How did it go, you ask? You guessed it. Except she didn't wait until 3a this time. By 1:30a she was up, crying, couldn't go back to sleep and couldn't breathe. I tried for about an hour to calm her down, rub her back, trying to get her to fall back asleep. No luck. What finally worked? About 30 minutes after I gave her some Benadryl her breathing got less labored and she calmed down. Back to sleep.
Hopefully she won't have to take something every night forever, like Sarah does. It makes me to sad to have to give someone so little medicine every day, but it does make her feel so much better. Of course it makes me feel better too, since we both get more sleep. You know how the saying goes, a happy mommy makes a happy family. There's definitely something to that.
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