Halfway down the Danube

Fever (2)

Just after 4:00 in the morning, December 27: I am driving the rental car slowly along the road between Ostheim and Stockheim. The night is very dark, moonless and cloudy, but it's a lovely wide smooth German road and, three hours before dawn on the Saturday after Christmas, there's not another car out for miles.

In Ostheim the Christmas lights are out and there's no movement except at the little bakery, which is an island of light and activity. In Stockheim, four kilometers away, there's not even that; the whole town sits silent and dark.

In the back seat: David, five and a half months old. He's in his little moonsuit, dressed so heavily that he couldn't move if he wanted to. He was whimpering when I loaded him into the car, but he fell silent once the engine started, and now there's no sound from the back except an occasional faint sucking on the pacifier. And after a while, that slows and then stops.

At long last, my baby boy is sleeping.

Both kids were up most of the night with fever and coughing. So we took it in shifts: Claudia slept from 10 to about 3, then I was able to sleep from 5:30 to around 11 am. Putting David in the car was a last desperate attempt to get him to sleep, please, sleep; and it worked. For a while.

In the morning Claudia and her mother, Anne-Marie, took the babies to the doctor. They have a virus. He gave us a febrifuge and some medicine for the cough, and told us to check back in three days if they were't doing better.

So, today was a sick baby day. Two sick children. Me and Claudia, her parents, her two brothers: six adults: it wasn't too many. Dear God, how do single parents survive?

The medicine seems to help, anyhow. Bracing for another night.

More in a bit.

Posted by douglas at December 27, 2003 06:15 PM