Covid Chronicles: Part 2
You’re probably wondering where part one is. Well if you read Spark Notes you know that I caught covid when I was in my first trimester with the babies. That was part 1. Terrifying in theory, pretty easy in reality. I tested positive on the first day of symptoms, spiked a fever and pretty much followed the covid timeline like clockwork with days 5 and 8 being the most brutal. I was tired from being pregnant so unsure if that correlated at all, but the fevers were the scariest part because that is a huge watch out while you’re pregnant. The strangest part of it all was that I lost my smell, not my taste (odd I know), and didn’t get it back until 3 days postpartum. I have a theory that my pregnancy congestion prevented my olfactory nerve from turning back on. I digress… we thought covid was behind us and were elated to be told my the doctors that the babies would have immunity for at least 6 months, due to the antibodies being transferred to them in utero and in my breastmilk. Plot twist. Everyone got covid again.
This past week B was acting really snoozy. We use the Huckleberry app to track naps and feeds and he kept falling asleep 30 minutes before his sweet spot. He also felt warmer than usual. Another side note here, I don’t know when your “he feels warm” radar comes in as a mom because I literally have zero clue when they are running a fever or not so I have baby thermometers all of the damn place. I put the Vava wearable thermometer on him and sure enough he started to spike a fever on Monday afternoon. Something told us to just take a rapid test to be safe because we had some at the house. His test lit up almost immediately. Frankie was negative. Time to isolate twins. yay.
I tested negative as well, but felt like complete crap. Tanner tested negative so he stayed with Frankie in the guest bedroom. The next day he felt like he got hit my a truck at work and Frankie started to spike a fever. Two more positive tests later and we had a house full of sick puppies. I did not test positive until day 7 of symptoms.
Taking care of sick babies already sounded daunting enough. All of the mom apps and emails have been spamming me in the past few weeks gearing me up for the inevitable first bug. They made it sound like when you’re breastfeeding a timer goes off at 6 months where you’re milk is no longer * m a g i c a l * and the babies can get sick. Having your babies first sickness be covid and then on top of that your whole house is sick and incapable of trying to keep not one but two babies alive has been horrible. One morning I had to pump, but I was so nauseas that I kept telling myself “one more minute, just make it one more minute” until I could get enough milk pumped and run to the bathroom to throw up. For those who have never breastfed / pumped who are thinking “why didn’t you just wait to pump?” well sleeping through a pump session, or in my case almost sleeping through two, is like waking up in a soaked t-shirt with Pamela Anderson boobs but… the wet t-shirt is soaked with titty milk and your boobs are bluer than an avatar and feel like they are about to fall off. Not fun, not cute.
Enough about us. The important thing was that the babies were champs. For anyone terrified of their babies getting sick with covid, know that the odds are in your favor. We were so lucky that they just had 24 hours of fevers and some constipation. We used infant Tylenol when they were above 38c and just made sure they were eating well and had plenty of wet diapers. They were actually ravenous, eating more than they had ever eaten in a day before. Possibly because of the fever, but for us this was great. We also kept up with their same routines of tummy time and play time, but watched closer for sleepy cues aka red eyeboos.
This was the shittiest week of new parent life outside of nicu, mainly because we felt like we couldn’t give our 100% to our kids who needed us. We survived, a lot in part to my saint of a mother who helped with the babies going so far as coming over at 4am to take them out of our room to let us sleep. Thankful for healthy babies and an overall healthy family.
