I absolutely love Christmas. This year I was super excited to spend it with my little girl, it being her first Christmas and all. We planned on dining at a friends house on Christmas Eve and then visiting another friend on Christmas day.

We set off to meet our friends at 5:30pm. When we got out of the car I thought Hazel felt a bit hot, but as you know the car seat can make a baby feel warmer. After having welcoming drinks we sat down to dinner. I had finished my first plate of food and was planning to get a second helping when I felt that my little girl was really feeling hot now.

Luckily my friend has 2 little boys and she suggested that we take her temperature. It was 39 degrees and we decided to take her to the Emergency Care Clinic.

The clinic was pretty busy so we had to wait. Apparently having a high fever isn’t seen as that important. To me, fever means danger. When I was young my parents always said we had to get the fever down or break the fever. They would even put us in icy cold bath water to try and break the fever. Breaking the fever was the most important thing. So naturally, I thought a high temperature is an emergency. The doctors reassured us that it’s the body’s natural response to a virus. They said they would put a urine bag on Hazel to check whether she had a UTI but they forgot.

We only got at around 11pm and sat up all night sponging her head to get her to cool down but to no avail. By 5 am her temperature was under 38 degrees and we thought we were out of the clear. By 9 am on Christmas day, her temperature spiked again and stayed at 38.5 most of the day. By 10pm it went up to 39 and we went back to the clinic. This time they referred us to the hospital. We waited for Hazel to have a wee in order to check her urine for a UTI test. At first she missed the bag and we had to wait some more. During our time at the hospital her fever broke and her temperature came back to normal. We only left the hospital at 5 am on the day after Christmas.

The rest of the day we periodically checked her temperature to make sure that it stayed low. That night it sounded like she had trouble breathing and off we went to hospital again…turns out we were just paranoid new parents

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On Sunday night she developed a rash all over her face. We phoned the healthline and was advised to head back to the Emergency Care Clinic.

This time the doctor was able to explain to us what we needed to look out for in the case of a bacterial rash and told us that a rash iften appears after a viral infection. He was very informative and to be honest, the best doctor amongst all the doctors we encountered over the weekend.

All in all we’re glad she’s better and hopefully next Christmas we’ll be able to have more fun with Hazel.