Year: 2005

Many parents say that their kids’ first sickness was a very hard time. Today Maxim has got a running nose. It’s not exactly a sickness or anything, since he doesn’t even have high temperature. Never-the-less we are taking it pretty tough. The sight of a 10 day old boy having a red face because he has difficulties breathing is very powerful – let me tell you that. For an adult, running nose is not even a problem. Adults know how to clean their noises, take pills, and use napkins. Infants don’t.

Dr.Simos confirmed that as long as there is no temperature, the situation is pretty much a routine and that many infants get into it. He recommended cleaning Maxim’s nose and keeping an eye on him. I went to the farmacy and perchased a couple of items.

One of them was some kind of spray (Physram or something like that), which is basically a steralized sea water. It is totally safe for infants and can be used as much as 5 or 6 times per day. One just puts it up the child’s nose and presses the button. Sea salt unblocks the nose and makes it really running. I tried it on myself first. Safe and easy to use. Leaves a somewhat bitter taste in the throat afterwords.

The second item that I bought was nasal aspirator. It is a kind of pump that is designed to be put into child’s nose and pumped to get anything there is out and into a pump. They had two different kinds in the farmacy. The first one looked all medical and complex with a long transparent hose and a huge pump. It looked scary and professional at the same time. The other one was from Chicco (major manufactorer of baby products). It was small and in a form of a toy. It looked neat and accurate. It also had these feeling of child safety all around it, so I bought it. It worked pretty good.

Anyway, it seems that Maxim will get over this minor illness in no time. On one hand I am glad that his medical experiences started with such an easy and simple thing. On the other hand, I feel pity for him every time I see (or remember) his face and the sound of his breathing.

Note to myself: ask Dr.Simos about the first aid kid during the next meeting. What must we have? What should we have? How and when to use these items?

Young parents are well known for doing all sorts of awkward things due to the lack of sleep. I’ve entered this realm by nursing the pillow two nights in a row. Maxim isn’t sleeping that well between approximately 1am and 4am. Thus I am jumping from the bed to calm him down and back to sleep about every 5 minutes. After a few jumps the procedure becomes mechanical and I do it in half-sleep. Yesterday and today Olga was waking me up when I was calming down the pillow… I guess mechanics don’t work that well. :)

Today Maxim’s umbilical stump dried up and fell off. Adulthood as it is. Cleaning up and putting proseptic gel on umbilical stump was the scarest job for me. Off with it, I am now for nail trimming horrors…

If you are one of those people who think that at such an early age as 6-7 days boys and girls are the same to take care of, let me tell you that you are wrong. Even at this early age, boys have their boy thing. The boy thing is directing the penis to pee at all sorts of things.

As any movement, penis coordination is at its early stages when boys are few days old. But they sure do try it. Yesterday, Maxim targeted the wall near the changing table. Success. Today he went even further and managed to pee all over his head. Now that’s a tricky one. :)

I think we’ll have to get a daughter now to see what a girl thing is…