Poor Sick Baby

Once again, Margaret is sick. Although she doesn't seem to be bothered by it and she really only has one symptom, her *lovely* explosive diarrhea has been quite the thing to deal with these past couple of days. It started on Saturday (fortunately, my MIL did not have to deal with it) with 2 incidences. Sunday it happened four times. Today once. Of these 7 incidences, 4 managed to leak out of the diaper. Yeah, LOTS of fun there. There's no fever and she's acting pretty normally (except for the hour or so of screaming she did tonight), so it's probably just a stomach bug. I called her pediatricians' office today just to check with them as to what they wanted me to do, but they were both out. The nurse felt that it wasn't too serious of a situation and advised me to keep doing what I'm doing and call back tomorrow morning. I read online to dilute the formula to 1/4 or 1/2 strength in the beginning (I've been doing 1/2 strength today) and to add some Pedialyte, which her doctors did recommend in case she got diarrhea the last time she was sick. I'm not thrilled about the sucralose in the Pedialyte, but I need to make sure she doesn't get dehydrated so I have been using about 1 oz per bottle. Seeing as she was down to one occurance today, I'm hoping this means she's almost over it. However, I did read that diarrhea in infants tends to last 1-2 weeks!!!

Looks like I will have an extended weekend on top of my already long weekend due to Columbus Day: Margaret can't return to daycare until the diarrhea has been gone for 24 hours. Then again, it's not like it's a vacation for me. She is very clingy right now so I can't get anything done without backup, and Brian has been working 11-12 hour days lately so I don't get backup until pretty late in the day. I just hope she feels better soon...