Thank you for scaring the living crap out of your parents at 12 days old.
On Sunday you were feeling a little warm so I took your temperature. It was a little high but not alarming so I decided to take a nap. I was awakened by your daddy about an hour later telling me we needed to call the doctor because your fever was up to 100.4, and the discharge paperwork from the hospital said to go to the ER if your fever ever got that high.
So we called the on-call pediatrician who advised us to take you to the ER immediately. He said the fever itself isn't dangerous but that it can be the only indication of a more serious sickness. He told us they would admit you to the hospital and draw blood, urine, and spinal fluids to test for viruses or bacteria, and then once the tests came back they could give you the right antibiotics. When I mentioned your skin was damp he also mentioned that it could be a reaction to herpes and asked if anyone in the house had a cold sore recently. . .which I did. So he said to definitely mention that to the ER so that they could run additional tests for that. Of course I was in tears at the thought of my newborn needing to be admitted to the hospital for such horrible tests, and also at the thought that you could possibly be sick because of my kissing your face with a small cold sore!
Thankfully things never got that far. We decided to take your temperature again with a digital thermometer (instead of the forehead strip) and to give you a bath, feed you, and change your diaper. . .and then if your fever was still high half an hour later we would take you to the hospital. Well, that's when we discovered that daddy hadn't been reading the thermometer right (not his fault, those forehead strips are tricky). Your temperature was definitely high, but not quite as high as he thought - about 100 degrees. And after your feed, diaper change, and bath it went down another couple degrees. So we have just been watching you carefully these past couple days and checking your temperature every couple hours. You've been a little fussier than usual while you've been under the weather but otherwise you are handling your first fever like a champ!
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