Miles was nearly ailment-free until he hit 11.5 months, and since then it's been onslaught after onslaught of weird baby diseases.
Rashes, fevers, croup, flesh-eating bacteria, etc. Ew. Most recently he's been fighting a case of Roseola, in which a baby gets a high fever for a few days, then the fever goes away, then he gets a gross rash.
Here's the disease illustrated, courtesy of Google Health. The best part of this disease is the irritability that comes as part of it. Miles whined non-stop all weekend. It's like you want to have only nice and soothing thoughts for your sick baby, but secretly (or publicly) you want to throw him out a window because he's following you around the house whining ceaselessly and nothing you can do makes him feel better.
I've been doing some thinking about sick babies lately, much to the amusement of our pediatrician, and I've come to the possibly obvious conclusion that the MORE Miles goes to the doctor, the more he gets sick. There are a couple possible explanations for this correlation.
1) The doctors can actually diagnose things like chronic irritability, so what used to be just an annoyance is now a treatable disease (kind of like ADHD).
2) Since there are SICK kids at the doctor's office, Miles gets SICK when he goes to the doctors' by playing with their disgusting germ-infested toys and sucking on half-chewed pretzels off the dirty-ass waiting room floor. (I got caught up in Glenn Close's fabulous portrayal of Cruella Deville and stopped watching the baby for ONE second, excuse me!) He went in for a flu shot and came out with Roseola. So that's how vaccinations cause baby illnesses, for those who were drawn in by the catchy title of this blog post.
For those who don't have kids yet, I'll tell you... sick kids are a drag. They suck all the energy out of you so even when you're at work or away from "ground zero" you're still exhausted and disoriented. Probably because you got up three times during the night to comfort the baby, or because you had to change your outfit due to a fat line of snot that trickled down your back when you hugged your little darling on your way out the door. Maybe there should be a sick kid farm where you can send them to heal up, then you can pick them up when they're back to 100%. Unfortunately, I think there's something about hugs from mommy and daddy that are more powerful than penicillin. But I'm no doctor, so don't quote me on that.
