I’ve come to the conclusion that “knocking wood” doesn’t work – or, at least, failed to work in the instance of Lyndon and I proudly bragging that our wonderful little guy, who had been solely breastfed for his first year of life and has a voracious appetite for whole, real foods, (and thus, by our reasoning, must have a stellar immune system), also never gets sick. You could hear these sentiments flowing from our mouths just a few weeks ago, as the weather finally started to turn, the Michigan permafrost started to melt, and we saw the sun for the first time in months. At this stage, we were both thinking that we had successfully made it through “cold and flu” season without a sign of either for our little guy. Um…oops?
At least his impeccable health had been impressive – until he was 19 months he had really only had a few cases of the sniffles, and one round of antibiotics for an ear infection when he was 9 months old…but had really done quite well considering a) he goes to daycare, b) I’m not a purell-toting mommy – I fall into a much more lax “germ” camp than many others, and c) I’m constantly hearing about how sick my friends kids are. All of that has come crashing down in the past few weeks.
What started as a round of simple sniffles and a little cough quickly escalated into a slightly panic-induced trip to the Saturday urgent care, with the result that the wee one had RSV. He actually dealt very well with the RSV, seemingly almost back to himself just a few days later…but then started to have sleepless nights again and turned back into a cranky pants. Another trip to urgent care later, and he had a double ear infection. So, we started him on antibiotics and waited for the magic to work.
Last Friday, I had a checkup with my Dr., and on a hunch brought Austin with – he had been tugging on his ear and was still having sleepless nights (which means that Lyndon and I were also – these things start to get personal when they are messing with the parent’s sleep). Lo and behold, both ears are still infected…poor kiddo! He is now on his second dose of antibiotics, and I’m frantically googling “chronic ear infection” and “antibiotic resistant ear infection.” (Not a good idea, by the way). Hopefully, this round takes care of his poor little ears, because I really don’t want to have to move to a third antibiotic, or start exploring other reasons for the infections.
Moreover, I was loving that it seemed he had no food intolerances. I was really careful about introducing foods slowly and monitoring for changes in behavior/mood/health after the common allergens were started in his diet. He didn’t get wheat, dairy, or corn for the first year of his life, and after they were introduced it seemed he thrived on all of them – and I rejoiced! So often, things like chronic ear infections can be traced to food intolerances, and I was overjoyed that it seemed we had dodged that bullet. And now…I wish I had knocked wood 
