The Temperature Hunter
We're very glad it was after 5.5 months, we got extremely lucky to have no real health problems until now.
Tuesday night Mara refused to stay asleep without my body right next to her. She would wake every couple of minutes looking for me, and we couldn't explain why. She usually gets her full 1h intervals down at night, which is when I get to cook/eat dinner from 7 to 8pm.
That night around 10pm I noticed her head burning up. Poor little baby. We spent the whole night nursing as often as we could, to ensure she stays hydrated. She woke up frequently and fussed, but it wasn't her pain cry, it was just an "I'm so tired, I really want to sleep!" type of fuss. We soothed and rocked her and I held her on me to sleep and it worked. By the way, that whole story of mothers regulating temperature for their babies is totally valid for us: my whole torso was chill to the touch, compensating for her fever. That's probably why she only slept like that.
Coughing started at 3am, runny nose and sneezing, the whole pack of symptoms.
But the funny part was the temperature taking.
We've had two different under-the-arm thermometers and they've always reported random readings. Greg claims they are consistently 2 degrees under the real value for his body, and 3-4 for mine. I call that pretty random, we have no idea how it scales upward for fevers.
I had a flashback of the dear old mercury-filled glass thermometer that we had when I was growing up. It was so cool, I remember the vigorous wrist shaking to get the Hg column to go down before a reading. That one worked! I had full trust in it! It also broke one day in the kitchen and made lots of gorgeous little metal marbles that were seeking each other. I only got to see a little but before my mom, armed with a broom and dustpan, shooed me out of the kitchen because it wasn't safe. I trusted that thermometer, it was awesome.
In parallel, Greg had been problem-solving. He showed up with the infrared thermometer we had gotten to check air leaks in the house. It's called the Temperature Hunter! It shoots out a cone of infrared light and try to scan the approximate temperature.
Yup we scanned the baby's forehead with it.
Nope it didn't seem to be accurate.
Yup Mara decided to get a hold of it and start hunting for temperatures on mommy and daddy. We've been raising a little sharp shooter, even in feverish times like these.
Nope it didn't seem to be accurate.
Yup Mara decided to get a hold of it and start hunting for temperatures on mommy and daddy. We've been raising a little sharp shooter, even in feverish times like these.
The early morning found a mommy determined to get herself an accurate thermometer. Here's a good read on that:
The short version is: get a temporal artery temperature scanner. It's fast, non invasive and as accurate as a rectal thermometer.
We got the Exergen Temporal Artery Thermometer from Target, and with Google Shopping Express it was at our door at 9 30am. Totally worth the money, it gets a reading in a second, it found the the values for both parents and baby. Thankfully, Mara was by now at a comfortable 100.1F. I love this gadget, first because it works, then because it's blazing fast, and third because it doesn't go in embarrassing or cumbersome cavities; vital when you're trying to use it on a squirmy little one. Holding Mara's arm close to her body for a sub-axillary thermometer makes her upset, plus I never know if I'm holding it in the right spot.
We got the Exergen Temporal Artery Thermometer from Target, and with Google Shopping Express it was at our door at 9 30am. Totally worth the money, it gets a reading in a second, it found the the values for both parents and baby. Thankfully, Mara was by now at a comfortable 100.1F. I love this gadget, first because it works, then because it's blazing fast, and third because it doesn't go in embarrassing or cumbersome cavities; vital when you're trying to use it on a squirmy little one. Holding Mara's arm close to her body for a sub-axillary thermometer makes her upset, plus I never know if I'm holding it in the right spot.
The Exergen scans 1000/sec for both skin temperature and ambient. Somewhere on the forehead, very close to the skin surface, there is the temporal artery pumping blood coming straight from the heart. You move the scanner across the forehead to the temple and it registers the maximum value found, which is that artery. It then takes into account the cooling factor based on the ambient readings and gives you a highly accurate core body temperature.
It's nice that it just takes in the max, which means that if baby squirms, you just resume the scan without releasing the button. So you can even play with your baby as you're doing it!
It's nice that it just takes in the max, which means that if baby squirms, you just resume the scan without releasing the button. So you can even play with your baby as you're doing it!
This scanner detects changes in body temperature almost immediately, it's reading the blood coming out of the heart. It also memorizes the last 8 readings in case you didn't write it down to keep track of the fever progress. It has a quiet mode: you can turn off baby facing lights and beeping so you don't disturb your little one at night.
The only downside, if I had to look for one, is that it doesn't work on the cat, unless of course you happen to shave her forehead.
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