High Maintenance Mom

There are times when I think I really have the parenting thing down. Like last weekend when we made 60 dinosaur sugar cookies (okay the kids only helped with about 25 of them but it was still fun). And then there are times when I wonder how many different ways an ear infection can cause my kids to act out before I realize what's going on...

Last Sunday B pee'd in his bed at about 1 am. The Pocket Physicist and I got up to take him to the bathroom, change his pajamas, and change his entire bed. Monday night it happened again - same drill at 3 am. Tuesday night we went to bed late wishing we hadn't and we woke to screaming at 5 am. Wednesday I stopped the run around the house game thinking he was overtired and that the accidents were occurring later and later so he might be fine. We woke to screaming at 1:15 am. By now we were worried that something might be wrong since he had had so few accidents since he stopped wearing diapers a year ago. We hadn't noticed any other changes during the week other than he wanted to run around a lot in the evenings. There were also several times when he wasn't listening to us or following directions but he's 3 so it wasn't that unusual.

By Thursday we were tired of doing the laundry every day and decided to wake him up before we went to sleep. After having him use the potty around midnight, he slept through the night. He was happy on Friday morning but then woke screaming from a nightmare during nap at school. At 4:00 he told a teacher that his left ear hurt and he wanted to go home. He then went back to lying on the ground.

I missed the first round of phone calls because I was in a meeting but I got back to my office for the second round. Knowing B's ear infection history, I cleared my schedule and walked over to get him. He was happy to see me and wandered at a good pace to my office where we talked with a few colleagues and called his pediatrician. I then called my husband to let him know he had to pick up Baby Scavenger and he reminded me I didn't have a car - the morning drive in together seemed so far away. So he had to rush from work and I had to carry B back to daycare - he was too sick to walk - with all of our stuff to get his little brother.

Luckily, our pediatrician agreed to see us 15 minutes late at the end of the day on Friday. And, yes, B had a raging ear infection in his left ear. I didn't realize the pain could cause him to have accidents and I had completely forgotten that he often wakes screaming from nightmares when he has an ear infection. I'm hoping that by writing this down I will remember it more quickly next time and possibly help someone else too.