After what have now been eight days of Kaia being ill, I finally decided to schedule a doctor’s appointment for her to see if there was anything additional that could be done for her. To date, I think this is the longest she’s been sick without much improvement, other than a fever that has faded off. The last few nights were especially rough: our combined constant coughing and phlegm really made for near sleepless nights. Each morning, she’d wake up with endless snot encrusted all over her face, and even all over her eyes. This morning, I had to slowly and gently massage her eyes and eyelashes with a warm, wet face towel to dislodge all the caked on snot so that she could even open her eyes. That was not fun… for her or for me.

So Chris took her to the pediatrician’s office this morning for a sick visit. And after some examination, they came to the conclusion that she’s actually at the tail end of this bad cold virus, which seems to be affecting a lot of kids her age recently. They don’t know exactly what the cold virus is, but they ruled out COVID or RSV. But what we weren’t quite expecting: after examining her ears, they realized that all the mucus she had been experiencing had given her an ear infection, as the inside of her right ear was red. So, they gave her a 10-day course of antibiotics for the ear infection.

It’s actually amazing she’s been able to stay away from ear infections until now. Ear infections are extremely common among babies and toddlers because their immune systems are under developed and less equipped to fight off infections. Ear infections are caused by bacteria and usually begin after a child has had a sore throat, cold, or upper respiratory infection. In Kaia’s case, she has the most common ear infection type, which is acute otitis media (AOM), where parts of the middle ear are infected and swollen, and fluid is trapped behind the ear drum. The ear infection was a bit of a surprise since she hadn’t shown any signs of it (no pulling or touching of the ears), but at the same time, I also wasn’t surprised that this had happened given how long she’d been so miserable.

Hopefully there is some light at the end of this tunnel now, hopefully.