“Feed me” said the Fever

I’ve always intended to learn more about both homeopathy and herbalism, but I don’t get serious about either until an illness prompts me to drag out some books and to poke around online.

When my son woke the other night before 9:30, we could tell something was off. He’d had a small cough and looked a little peaked, and his dad had been fighting off a cold for a few days. E was so out of it and resistant to going back to sleep in his bed/alone, I brought him downstairs, and he snuggled in and fell asleep, staying asleep as we finished a rare night of actually watching a movie (actually, we’d started the movie the night before and were really hoping to finish it this time!). The boy had some twitching and seemed mildly delirious, as though he was having vivid dreams and thinking he was awake.

But still, it wasn’t until after midnight that I felt the heat radiating off of him and started to smell on the acrid tinge to his breath that told me his body was becoming a bug-killing cooking machine.

Even eHow has an article that explains a fever is a body doing good work. We have never tried to artificially lower our son’s fevers with Tylenol or Motrin, even when it once went up to 104.7. I’m sure we’ll have to resort to allopathic medicine at some point, but whenever possible, I hope to let his body’s immune system do its job and help it out only with natural means.

Our doctor said he thought frequent applications of belladonna might help. That I actually had at home, so we started it a few hours later when the boy woke up from drowsing on the couch with his dad. He did seem to perk up a bit, and he ate some. I put him in the Ergo and we all took a short walk in the unseasonably warm, 50-degree afternoon.

The night was a little smoother, but he still had lots of desire to be near me, and I nursed him in bed even though we’d stopped that weeks ago (we also are using diapers during this illness even though we’d had our first very successful diaper-free week).

But still, he was around 102 this morning, and the cough sounded worse. So we asked the doctor to fit us in. E ate a little bit this morning and drank some of his blue Odwalla juice that he’d randomly demanded in the middle of the night, but for the most part, he slept all morning.

The doctor was not worried about the chest sounds and saw nothing in the ears. We discussed symptoms, and he determined that gelsemium might be the new remedy to try.

I used the Ergo again in the grocery store and gave him some pellets once they’d been rung up. The boy was about to check out, too, practically asleep and drooling on my front, all 30 pounds of him.

After we got home and he wanted to be up from resting, he requested coconut juice and then mango coconut yogurt. I put it in front of him after spooning him a few bites and offered that I could feed him if he needed me to. A minute later, he demanded, “Feed me!” a phrase I never thought I’d serious hear from my almost-three-year-old, or from anyone outside of Little Shop of Horrors or a TV sitcom, for that matter.

But he only wanted a few bites and then said he needed to poop on the potty, which I took as a good sign. After that, more rest, more nursing, more rest, more nursing. It’s like I have a baby again. It’s much calmer and quieter around here than I’m used to, and I can appreciate that, but I sure do hope the little guy is back to his old self soon.