Max's first disease

Max in middle of his disease.

I guess our luck had to run out sometime, and on what we suspect was Wednesday, December 10, Max caught a disease from his playgroup. Max seemed fine as the weekend approached, as documented by the photo below.

Max and strainer.

However, Max's visit with the eternally older, bigger and stronger Louisa on Sunday did not go well. Oh sure, in a sense it never goes well for Max - Max ignores Louisa and she tackles him, Max reads a book and Louisa takes it from him, but this time he was very clingy and whiny. Was he teething? Did he need sleep? We had no idea.

A rare smile from Max. Luckily, Louisa didn't catch the disease, despite sharing his food.

Soon, he started sounding like he was snoring, except he was awake and had all kinds of cute little coughs. At night it wasn't so funny. He coughed himself awake about every hour and we had to soothe him to sleep every time. A visit to the doctor the next day revealed he had croup. For the unitiated, croup is caused by breathing difficulties, and is normally fine and can be treated at home, unless in some cases the trachea closes and it's fatal. Good to know. Anyway, he was sent home with some steroids that are used to open up his trachea. Delia and I spent the rest of the day holding him while he coughed on us. Good thing baby viruses are no match for my manly immune system.

So anyway, Max responded pretty well - the next day he was tired but certainly sounded much better, and by Wednesday he was starting to crawl around a bit. Another baby in the baby group, Sean, also had croup, and his mom was pretty sick, which certainly helped us isolate the cause.

Sean: Disease carrier?

So Delia offered to take care of Sean a bit while his mom caught some sleep. And, not to say I'm implying anything here, but Max's recovery soon took a big U-turn. A couple days later, he left the doctor with another prescription for steroids, as well as some antibiotics (for apparently a secondary ear infection). Mom got a little sick, which didn't help. As for me, my manly immune system gave out completely and I got pretty much the full list of symptoms in Nyquil commercials. Mom, baby and me sick at the same time. Words of sympathy we got were something like "Get used to it."

On Saturday, however, Delia's parents heroically drove over to help. With Delia's dad cooking and mom taking care of Max, Delia and I could wander around like a zombie, lie in bed with my eyes closed, or read a great library book with the heady title, "The Future of Freedom" while Max was in good hands, coming out only to eat their soup. What was most amazing to me, though, was how Max responded. My job, as I saw it, was to soothe him and keep him from being too miserable. However, Delia's mom didn't bother with the misery part and played with him like he was healthy. For the first time in a while, his smile came back.

Delia's mom and Max.

Anyway, while we suspect there were several diseases in this house, Max is getting better. Here's Max's preferred use of the swing.

Last night. It was amazing to watch Max start from the floor and systematically work himself into the most dangerous position he could find.

We're not fully recovered yet, but things are improving, not counting mom. Anyway, here are a couple things I learned:

1) They (by that I mean the alien creatures who create articles on the Internet) recommend a cool mist humidifier for a croupy baby. Maybe in theory, but in practice it freezes the room. Perhaps for this reason, Max refused to be put into the crib and would only fall asleep being held (opening his eyes every few minutes or so just to make sure you didn't cheat and put him down.)

2) Nothing sucks more than trying to sing to your baby when you have laryngitis.

3) I couldn't sleep last night because of various pains, but that let me look around YouTube and find this video of an insane man surfing an unbelievably big wave. Even if you don't surf, look at the link.