C is still really sick today. I have never seen a little child look this visibly unwell. My sister says she looks so bad that if she saw us out with her, she would call the child welfare authorities.

I am staying home with her this morning, and then Jon will take the afternoon shift at home because I have a big presentation at work today at 3:30 pm.

The eye infection is just terrible. It took several minutes with a warm washcloth to pry her little eyes open when she woke up this morning. And now she’s throwing up. A lot. I had to take her out in th ecar to take the kids to school this morning, and she cried the whole way there and back, and then vomited copiously all over herself and the carseat right after I dropped H off. It’s a good thing she waited until her older brother got out of the car because nothing in the world repulses H more than baby vomit (except maybe baby runny noses). If he had witnessed (and smelled) this particular incident, he would have been haunted for days!

So far, I see no success from the antibiotics. I am hoping she will start to improve sometime today.

Whenever I have a sick little kid, I think about how terrifying it must have been before the advent of antibiotics to realize that your toddler was becoming ill. Parents knew that they might be seeing the beginnings of a bad cold that would resolve on its own…or the beginnings of their child’s last days on earth. And of course, all over the world, in less affluent countries, mothers still live with this fragile and frightening situation every day. That’s heartbreaking.