First Fever

Last week, I stupidly made the comment that we'd been really lucky in that we'd gone nearly 9 months without Celeste having any illness (excepting, of course, her second week hospitalization for jaundice). This afternoon, we had our first fever scare.

This morning, she woke up around 4:00 a.m. and did the inconsolable crying thing. Evelin and I took turns trying to soothe/calm her and, after a stint in our bed, Evelin nursed her back to sleep a bit past 5:00 a.m. I thought she felt warm at that point, but it was chalked up to her having been in snuggly pyjamas and with her blankie while I was just in boxers.

Flash forward to the afternoon: We'd been to the farmers market where Celeste enjoyed listening to the Banjo Man with a bunch of other kids, Evelin took her on a walk while I went to return the previous night's movie (National Treasure) and to run a few other errands. When I got home, Celeste was napping; they hadn't gone very far before Celeste started to fall asleep, so Evelin turned around to get her home to her crib.

It turned out to be not too long of a nap, and Celeste was pretty grumpy. She was playing on the floor with Evelin next to her reading and me across the room with the newspaper, but she kept fussing. We'd try some of the usual favorites, but she still was fussy. I kissed her forehead and thought she felt warm, so Evelin got the forehead thermometer, which was showed a high fever, so we decided to disturb her with a more accurate thermometer — 101.4°F.

A quick check of our doctors' instructions said to worry/call if the fever was higher than 102°F, so we dosed her with some Infant's Motrin and, while Evelin fed her, I started paging through all the books. We gave her a tepid bath, which did help cool her off, and, after the Motrin'd had some time to work her fever came down to the warm stage. During the bath, I put a stick-on thermometer on her forehead so that we could get a rough idea of how she was doing without having to resort to more uncomfortable thermometer techniques.


After a short nap on top of Evelin, Celeste was definitely feeling better: playing more actively and acting less crabby. By her bedtime, the forehead thermometer was registering a mild fever, but she was still acting better. Our plan is to watch her overnight and hopefully the fever will pass: It's possible it could be teething related, but it seems a bit on the high side for that ...