Freaking Thrush

When V was one, two or three months old (yeah I have a good memory for these things), her pediatrician looked at her tongue and said, "there is some white stuff on there--looks like thrush." I looked and thought, so there is, but it didn't really look very different from my own tongue, and having already googled the internet to familiarize myself with every known infant sickness (what do you expect, look at where I used to work) it didn't look like thrush or have any of the usual accompanying symptoms other than the white tongue. He said, "I'll give you medication to give her, and medication for yourself (so that we don't cross-contaminate each other)."

FYI thrush is just excess yeast. It can develop into really gross looking shit (google for images if you dare; I did and felt continuing waves of regret as I clicked on one image after another, after another, after another).

So I go to the pharmacy with the script, and I get a cream for me, for my [chicken] breasts, and a liquid suspension for V. Twice daily I have to smear this thick white crap on myself, and when I pick V up after a feeding, she looks like she's been eating drywall. Deez-gust-ing. And then four times daily, I have to squirt 1.5 ML of stuff into her little mouth using a dropper.

What baby wouldn't want to be force fed a mouthful of crap a bunch of times a day? I would squeeze one drop from the dropper into her mouth, and she'd push the medicine out with her tongue onto her face, and then I'd have to use my fingers to scoot the medicine back in. She'd push it back out, I'd scoot it back in. And again, and again.

It was like trying to get shampoo back into the little squirt hole after you've squeezed too much out in your hand. Drop, scoot, scoot, scoot, scoot, scoot. Yay, one drop down. Fifty more drops to go. When you're dealing with a baby, 1.5 ML is like a freaking liter. I had to do this four times a day, for 7 freaking days. At the end of the 7 days, I checked her tongue. IT WAS STILL WHITE.

Back to the pediatrician. "Oh sometimes the stuff I prescribed doesn't work. Now I'll prescribe you the stuff that always works." Gee whiz, thanks.

So again, another 7 days of drop-scootx5, drop-scootx5, drop-scootx5, repeat until you want to kill yourself with the dropper.

AND STILL HER TONGUE WAS WHITE.

Back to the pediatrician. "Hmm. Well, it will go away by itself eventually." It took every ounce of my being to not chuck the baby scale at his head.

And guess what, it went away by itself.