Even as a child, I was awed by my mother's ability to tell if my brother or I had a fever just by touching our foreheads. She could estimate almost to the decimal. Over the years, I've tried to gauge fevers myself, attempting to determine if people -- friends, my husband, myself -- "feel warm" by pressing a palm to their cheeks or foreheads. The problem was, they all felt somewhat warm. It's all relative, right? The only thing I could say with any certainty was that they weren't dead.
But yesterday morning at 4:30 am when Clio was crying and I picked her up to nurse her, I knew instantly that she had a fever. Her feet felt hot. Her head felt hot. She was a little ball of dry, radiant heat. I took her temperature, and sure enough, it was 101. I gave her some Tylenol and held a cool washcloth to her forehead while I nursed her. Fifteen minutes later, she was down to 100, and both of us were able to get another couple hours of sleep. By morning, she was down to 98, and I could definitely feel the difference.
She'd been irritable the day before, with a runny nose and diarrhea (according to the babysitter) and intermittent bouts of inexplicable, vehement screaming. She'd been up twice in the night already, crying, and God, she is a loud baby. I mean, the girl can really wail when she wants to. It's like she's trying to be a parody of a crying baby. Her screams literally sound like: "Waaaaaah!!!!!"
We figured that either she was cutting a tooth, or she had a cold. (Elsa's nose has been runny, too.) So the fever wasn't completely out of the blue. Hence, it did not freak me out. What it did, in fact, was make me feel more like a mother: I know my baby so well, that I can tell by touch that she has a fever. What's next? Eyes in the back of my head? Tapered jeans? (Oh wait, aren't those cool again? Blech.)
It does seem to be when my babies are at their most unhappy and vulnerable that the mothering feeling comes out in fullest force. This makes good, biological/evolutionary sense, I suppose. We had to bring Clio to the emergency room a couple of months ago when she had a weird rash of broken blood vessels on her legs (turned out to be a harmless case of HSP, but our doc told us to take her to the hospital because there was a chance it could be a sign of a bad infection), and it was the first time I didn't feel funny referring to one of my girls as "my daughter." It was the first time I had to take responsibility for someone's health other than my own. And it was also the first time I understood in a visceral, up-close way how losing a child would be the worst kind of pain imaginable.
Back to yesterday: Clio's fever was completely gone by mid-morning, and she didn't seem to be as congested either. I keep looking at her mouth expecting to see the little white tip of a tooth sprouting from her gums, but no sign yet. If she is teething, and the symptoms she had were related, and it's going to go like this time after time until all 20 little choppers are in there -- oh boy. I'm gonna feel like one hell of a mother by the time it's all done.
Incidentally, the title of this post is meant to be a reference to the Shania Twain song "Damn! I feel like a woman." A song which I hate. Whose annoying melodic hook is now going to be stuck in my head all day. Why do I do this to myself?
