Sick baby

Tabitha has a nasty little cold - with a rattling chesty cough, poor little mite.

She is okay, sleeping fairly well (with long naps during the day), but she is all red-eyed and bleary and sad and coughing.

I tried to get a photo of her looking all sad and sick, but she continues in her quest to be the World's Happiest Baby and stubbornly refused to look poorly:

Despite photographic evidence to the contrary, she really is ill.  If I walk more than a few steps away from her she cries and cries - poor muffin must feel just rotten.

As a parent, you need to find the silver lining, or else it's easy to get down.  So instead of complaining about having a sick baby, here is my list of the not-so-bad parts of sickness:

• Tabitha is extra-cuddly.  When I get her up from her nap, she just wraps around me for a cuddle.  When she's playing on the floor, she keeps crawling over to me for more long cuddles.  She is happy to rest her head on my shoulder and just have a hug for a while.  It's nice.

• I have stayed at home this week, not going to our ordinary activities (Gymbaroo, swimming etc) because she needs to rest.  So we've actually had a really lovely quiet week at home, reading lots of stories, building block castles, and making up songs about cats!

• We have pretty much been in our pyjamas all week!  Comfy little Bonds PJs for Tabby, Peter Alexander baggy pants for me.  Lots of cups of tea, watching some DVDs and knitting while she naps.  A nice quiet week to stay at home (and get lots of washing done!).  Here is Tabitha mooching around in her PJs.  I got 5 pairs of cute Bonds cotton PJs for $10 a pair!!  Amazing!

• Finally, we have used this as motivation to have a super-healthy week.  Lots of fresh vegetables, fruit, and lots of baby pro-biotics for Tabitha (I take them too, and some does go through the breastmilk, but since she's ill I'm dosing her up).

Being a first-time mumma, I'm no expert on illness!!  But here is what works for us:

• Our nifty Vicks Vaporiser.  I have mentioned these before - they are brilliant, make a huge difference to chest and nose congestion, and allow Tabby to sleep well at night and during the day.

• Her chest cough was pretty bad this morning, so I sat in the bathroom with her (door closed) and put the shower on HOT and let it run into the bath (with a plug) until the whole room got steamy, and the bath was half full.  I then topped the bath up with a little cold water, to get normal bath temperature, and we both sat in the warm bath, in the VERY steamy room, for half an hour or so.  This helped to clear up her chest a little.

• Lots and lots of babywearing!  As long as she is firmly attached to me, Tabitha is happy.  She seems to breathe better, too, being upright, and having her against me keeps her nice and warm.  This pretty piece of fabric has been our saviour for the past few days:

• Tabitha has shown minimal interest in solid foods while sick, so she's been having lots of breastmilk around the clock - a good feed every couple of hours.  This is brilliant, because I know she is hydrated, getting a balanced diet (protein/fat/carbs/sugars etc) and lots of natural antibodies and vitamins.

Hopefully she starts to improve over the next couple of days...