Last night may have been the worst since Thursday, before Simon’s illness began. As I lay in my bed not sleeping, I listened as Simon lay in his crib, also not sleeping, as he cried off and on at 11:00 p.m., at midnight, at 1:00 a.m. and then again at 3:00.
At 3:00, the crying took on a desperate tone that led us to grab him and put him in bed with us. He was hot, but not super hot, and his arching back and stiffening legs indicated stomach pain to me. He finally settled down at around 4:20 or so, at which point Matt and I put him back in his crib and hoped he’d sleep a good long stretch. Which, if you count an hour and half as a good long stretch, he did.
At 6:00 a.m. he again awoke with a piercing, desperate cry. The minute I picked him up I knew that the news was actually good. Simon was drenched. His diaper was wet, his shirt was wet, and his hair was soaked, but his forehead was unusually cool. Seventy-two hours after it began, Simon’s fever finally broke. A quick thermometer reading confirmed that he was a perfectly normal 98.2 degrees.
Not that that made him feel much better; no, he was clearly miserable. We talked to him about what was going on as we changed his clothes, then settled into a position (he laying up against me) that calmed him. By around 7:30, I could hear his breathing settle into a slow, regular pattern. So I slipped out from under him, scooted over to the edge of the bed, and we all fell back to sleep, hopefully for a good long stretch.
And then, promptly at 9:00 a.m., the delivery crew from Mattresses and More rang our front doorbell. How ironic that a purchase designed to improve our sleep would end up destroying it on the very day it was most needed.