After getting the COVID vaccine yesterday, the baby seemed to take it all pretty well. She was still babbling and playing away. Everything seemed fine. That is, until today, about 24 hours later, she became unusually warm, and Chris took her temperature to find out that she had a fever of 103.8 F, the highest she’s ever had. We gave her a cold compress and tried to feed her some baby Tylenol, but she gagged when the first squirt went into her mouth by syringe and ended up throwing up. It got everywhere – all over the baby’s top, bib, Chris’s shirt, my shirt, the pillow we propped her up on, the floor. I felt so terrible for her. She really hates medication, and the syringe is definitely like an enemy to her. After cleaning her up, we ended up putting the baby Tylenol solution into a shallow bowl and feeding it to her with one of her silicone feeding spoons, which she has a far better association with. It worked, though I could tell that she could smell the difference between the spoon with the water vs. the spoon with the medication. We also gave her a bath today, even though today is not normally bath day, so she’d get some indulgence and fun in.

Everyone has talked about the COVID vaccination side effects for adults, but whenever a baby has side effects or a fever, the reaction of course is always different since babies can’t tell you when you aren’t feeling well, and you just have to use your own best judgment in terms of reading them to see how they react. But just going on this, it becomes a little more nerve wracking, and you hope everything works out for the best.

The COVID-19 vaccines have finally been approved by the FDA here in the US, and so while we contacted our pediatrician’s office to see when we could schedule an appointment, they were a bit on the slow side and still had no update for us this week. Chris got impatient and instead, signed up our baby to get the Moderna vaccine at a COVID vaccine site in midtown. As expected, when he took her there this afternoon, the area was mobbed by anti-vax protestors, and they had to exit out of a separate area to get away from the mobs. The nurses all gushed over Kaia and wanted to play with her. She might have been the youngest patient they had come in all day and were obsessed with how cute she was, not to mention how well she took her little jab.

Our baby has handled all her standard vaccinations well; the most she’d ever exhibited was extra fatigue and wanting to sleep more, and eat a bit less. She’d never had any additional fussiness or fever as a result, so we were hopeful she’d handle this vaccination okay. She seemed relatively normal after the shot, but because she got a bit warm when we checked her temperature, we gave her some baby Tylenol just in case. It was the first time we’d ever given her any medication after any vaccination.

In a month’s time, she’d have her second dose and be fully vaccinated for COVID. She’ll also be ready to get on a plane and explore more of the world a bit more safely.

Pediatricians and baby eating experts often say that regardless of when a baby starts eating solids, whether it’s at 4 months or 6 months, the majority of their diet should continue to be breast milk or formula up until the age of 1. Part of the reason for this is that the introduction of solids is simply that — an introduction. The baby will not be having a majority diet of solids for a long time after getting initially introduced. They have to get used to eating non-breast milk/formula. They are adapting to new tastes, textures, self-feeding, being feed from a spoon or from a plate and not through a bottle nipple or mom’s nipple. So in the beginning, the baby will likely play with and throw the food, taste and spit it out. Not much actual eating and swallowing will happen. That comes as a real shock to a lot of new parents who haven’t read much about introducing solids, and so they get really disappointed when the baby doesn’t actually eat and swallow (including Chris). But babies, like the rest of us, need time to get used to new foods. Just the exposure is a good thing in the beginning. Playing with the food, even if it’s just pushing it around the tray or throwing it, is still exposure. They are still interacting with the food, which is good. It’s considered a win or a “mini meal” if they have just the equivalent of one teaspoon of something, and then eventually, one tablespoon of something. So as you can imagine, introducing solids, whether it’s in whole food form or via pureed food, is going to take a crap ton of patience. The more I have thought about this, the more I have realized that introducing a large array of foods in different shapes, colors, and sizes, takes a LOT of time, energy, and patience; thus, it’s no wonder that kids end up becoming picky eaters. Their parents just didn’t have the time or energy to introduce them to eating the rainbow. In some cases, the parents are just being lazy (or imposing their own picky eating on their kids). In most cases as I’d assume, though, it’s because the parents were just too exhausted.

Babies have nothing to compare solids to in terms of taste, other than breast milk or formula. So they don’t have any pre judgments about whether mango should be tastier than broccoli or brussel sprouts. So far, we’ve introduced Kaia to avocado, Alphonso mango, broccoli (steamed, roasted, pureed), and asparagus (roasted, and lime (a wedge). She has no reason to prefer any of these things to the other, and my hope is that she will eventually embrace them all. But we just need to be patient and not impose our own judgments of these foods onto her.

Kaia and I both have temperatures that have come down now. We are still monitoring her temperature every two hours to be safe. My temperature is within normal range now, but I still feel hot all the time and sweat like crazy during my first morning pump. This morning, I nearly soaked through my shirt with my own sweat after taking off my pumping bra.

Though Kaia is babbling lots again and happily playing with her toes, she does seem to be a bit more needy. She’s wanted more cuddles from her nanny and from me. She wants more attention even at times when it seems like she’d be fine to roll around on her own. I can tell that she is still unwell, even if her temperature is normal. She’s on the mend, but she hasn’t 100 percent recovered just yet. So we decided to not have her go to the play gym today and to take it easy. The nanny still took her outside to the park for some fresh air, but no crazy baby gymnastics just yet.

We were planning to use this week to transition her from her bassinet into her crib, but it’s on hold now because we needed to monitor her overnight more carefully with her fever, plus I just wasn’t really feeling up to a change given I was feeling ill. No one wants to introduce change into their lives when they’re feeling unwell; that applies to both adults and babies. We struggled to get her to sleep in the crib on her own on Monday night before either of us felt really awful, so we’ll need to wait until we’re both fully healthy again to try again.

Both Kaia and I have had fevers the last two days. I took yesterday and today off from work. I could barely focus, especially with my entire head and face hurting. Even listening to my daily Up First NPR news podcast was challenging. My entire body was aching and feeling heavy. I constantly felt hot, and pumping this morning was causing me to sweat what felt like buckets. When I took the flanges off my breasts after this morning’s pump, the edges were dripping with my own sweat. I was hoping that my sweat didn’t drip into the bottles to taint and dilute my baby’s milk.

When you get sick, everyone tells you to stop what you are doing and to just rest. That becomes harder when you have a baby to take care of. But it’s even harder when you have a baby to take care of, AND you exclusively pump. Granted, our nanny has been here during the day to care for the baby, but no matter what, my pumping job has to continue. If I do pump, I feel exhausted and sweaty, plus it takes away time for me to lie down and actually rest. If I were to stop pumping, not only would that be detrimental to my supply, but I would likely get engorged and experience clogged milk ducts once again. So I can’t stop pumping.

And what I feared would happen has happened. I had read about when pumping moms get sick that their supply starts to drop. On Monday and yesterday, my supply was pretty normal, but today, I lost almost 90ml of breast milk supply when comparing to my last 7-day average. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but to me, that was a LOT. I was still pumping as many times as I normally do, and for the same duration of time. I was probably drinking more fluids than usual since my throat hurt so badly and I was super dry. I think I was eating similarly, but wasn’t 100 percent sure. I’m hoping this drop is temporary, as it seems to be temporary from what I’ve read of most sick pumping moms’ experiences, but you never know until it happens to you. I’m trying not to get too anxious about it since stress also has negative effects on milk supply, but how can I not be concerned when breast milk is how I primarily nourish my baby? Kaia’s been eating less since she also has been under the weather, so it hasn’t impacted her percentages of breast milk vs. formula yet, but I’m still worried.