I’m Anti-Antibiotics, Until My Kid Gets Sick

pediatrician-antibiotics-ear-infectionI am not a mom who rushes to the pediatrician at the first sign of illness, and I definitely think we have a big national (and international) problem with how liberally antibiotics are handed out over a small child’s slightest sniffle. I’m a big proponent of the “let it run its course” school of treating most minor childhood illnesses. So how the hell did I end up with an antibiotics prescription for my ten-month-old son’s ear infection?

Apparently my hubris in preaching the germ exposure gospel finally caught up to me three weeks ago, when both of our twins caught a nasty cold. Maybe it was the grody hotel we stayed at after a flat tire at midnight on the way home from a wedding in Ohio; maybe it was taking them to a zoo covered in other kids’ germs; maybe it was the lady at the wedding we attended who stuck her fingers in my daughter’s mouth. (Why? WHY?) Whatever the cause, both twins ended up sick and miserable, and so were their dad and I.

The edge still hasn’t worn off my new-mom instincts, which start screaming, “PANIC!” the second I see a runny nose; but I know there’s not much a doctor do for a cold, and that throwing antibiotics at the problem is worse than doing nothing at all. So we kept an eye on fevers, cranked up the humidifier, and made liberal and oh-so-disgusting use of the NoseFrida. (I know it would make it harder to tell if you were accomplishing anything, but I really wish that the nose-adjacent part of the NoseFrida were opaque instead of clear.)

Snot was drained, noses were wiped, nights were un-slept through. And pretty soon, my daughter started to get back to wreaking her usual amounts of gleeful havoc; but my son was just as miserable as ever. And on top of that, he started to flip his little lid every time we tried to lay him down for a nap or at bedtime. After two days of putting him into a car seat to sleep so that gallons of mucus weren’t pouring down the back of his throat, his fever crept over 100 and he started picking at his meals instead of his usual pattern (shovelling them frantically into his face). I decided it was time to call the doctor. Did he have strep throat? The flu? Oh, man. Should I have been panicking about enterovirus after all?

The pediatrician listened to the list of symptoms I rattled off, and I had barely finished by the time she was ready to peer into the baby’s ears. All she said when she got the instrument into his first ear was, “Oh, wow,” and the second one was, “Yikes.” The poor little guy had a double ear infection to the degree of “hella”, and that was why he was so miserable in the crib as well as why he was so uncharacteristically off his food.

“I’m going to order you some amoxicillin. He’s not allergic, is he?” The pediatrician reached for the mouse to enter a prescription into the computer, but I hesitated while I tried to bounce some happiness into the still-grousing baby on my lap.

“I – no, he’s not. But, the antibiotics, um. Viral ear infections.” A week of sleepless nights had sapped the strength from my Science Mom brain. I started to tear up a little bit, in front of our kid’s doctor, who is supposed to have the impression that I am a grown-ass adult. “Should he?”

The doctor sat back from the computer for a moment. “His ears have been bothering him for two days, and you think he’s getting worse, not better. When he’s two years old and I’m refusing to write you a prescription for his ear infection, I hope you remember this conversation. But for now he’s got two bad-looking ears, and he can’t tell us how much pain he’s in. When he’s older, you both get to wait it out. Today, amoxicillin.”

“Okay,” I croaked. She entered the prescription, shook my hand, waved goodbye. We went home with the bubble-gum flavored amoxicillin, which I’m glad the baby is too young to remember, because he acts like it’s some kind of hot pink baby crack. By two days later, our little guy had rediscovered the joie de vittles, and “nap time” was no longer a synonym for “scream until he passes out” time.

I don’t know whether the antibiotics helped or a viral ear infection finally ran its course. I trust our pediatrician, and I’m glad the baby finally feels good enough to dive face-first into a plate of pumpkin pasta. But I still feel vague, I-singlehandledly-created-a-superbug guilt, and I don’t think that’s going away anytime soon.

(Photo: Dmitry Kalinovsky/Shutterstock)

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