What do you get when you cross a newborn with two older, school-age brothers?

Disease. Delicious, infectious disease oozing from the nostrils of older siblings and making the environment ripe for transmission. It's the reason I haven't updated the blog for a few days. I've been knee-deep in baby bodily fluids, so to speak. The funny thing is, I'm not nearly as stressed about his illness as everyone else is.

I remember when Intrepid had his first cold. He was five months old and was sniffly. I rushed him to the pharmacy post-haste and demanded to know what could make my sickly baby better. I woke up several times a night (in between nursing sessions, even) to watch his breathing and check his forehead. I took his temperature at the slightest indication of warmth.

Fast-forward to this week. Gutsy gets sick and starts to get that crackly cough known to us as pneumonia. As mentioned in a previous post, the middle gremlin's chest x-ray looked good, so he was sent home and his fever broke the next day.

A couple of days later, Spawnling develops the same cough. He's sleeping a lot, he's grumpy and I have to carry him around all day. I don't think too much of it, though. A cold is a cold, and this one goes straight into the lungs like a teenage boy's tongue on a date. Besides, I think, we have an appointment on Thursday for the Spawn's two month exorcism, er, doctor's appointment, so we'll just deal with it then.

On Wednesday night he starts to feel a bit warm. So I do what every sensible mother would do: I take him shopping.

That's right. Shopping. I figured he could either try and sleep while the other gremlins scream at each other and run around the house, or pass out quickly in the van and keep right on snoozing in his stroller as we make our way through the dull drone of Christmas music and overwhelmed shoppers. Like I said: sensible. We buy some gifts, pick up some Tempra and head home. I give him his first taste of anything not Made in Mom and we get some sleep.

At the doctor's office the following afternoon, baby Spawnling was about the same as he had been the last couple of days. The doc unceremoniously stuck a thermometer up his wazoo and got a reading of 38.2c (which is (100.7f, for the non-converts). Not terribly high, but enough that it warrants a chest x-ray. We skip my part of the visit (a pap and a weigh-in, shucks darn) and head off to the hospital.

Half an hour later I was inducted into a very elite group of moms. How many can say they've had two children pumped full of radioactive goodness in a single week? I suppose it isn't too surprising, given that one is an asthmatic and the other is nine weeks old. Still, it's one of those stories I'll be telling my two-headed grandchildren.

Anyway, while the x-ray didn't find any obvious signs of pneumonia, the doctors felt it best to prescribe some antibiotics just in case. I'm not a big fan of giving children unecessary medication, nor do I like the blatant overuse of antibiotics that has run rampant through the Western world. Still, pneumonia in a two-month-old is not something to be trifled with. On the other hand, thrush really, really sucks, and that's what happens when the big, bad drugs slay the innocent little florae hanging out in the gut. Thrush makes breastfeeding mommies cry. We're not too keen on it.

I decided it would be in his best interest to give him the drugs, despite my apprehension and my undoubted disgust for bacteria-filled yoghurt by next week. After three doses, my little guy was back to his happy, smiley self. Drugs are good.

No, no, wait. My children might read this one day. Kids, what I mean is, some drugs are good. Only drugs given to you by doctors. Um, hang on... Not people who call themselves doctors, though. If a guy called Dr. Dre offers you drugs, say no. He just calls himself that so he can get poor white guys high, give them a record deal and watch them make an ass out of themselves on awards shows.

All this to say that baby Spawnling is doing a lot better no thanks to me. What happened to me? I went from being an uberparanoid parent to someone who is frighteningly relaxed. Throughout the entire ordeal I never worried once. I think it's because we've had three bouts of pnemonia between the first two. It's getting old now, you know? We've also had rosacea, chicken pox, hand foot and mouth disease... The list goes on. It takes some of the sting out of medical visits. I might, however, break a bit of a sweat at the word 'ebola'.

People have been saying 'Oh my God! Pnemonia! He's so little! It's so terrible! I like making obvious statements! The sky is blue! It's fun to make The Maven use a lot of exclamation points in her posts!'

It's not that bad, really. He's doing well. I'll only start worrying if he takes a turn for the worse, not before. In fact, I've been far more focused on the fact that there are children out there who don't have access to the $13 medication that potentially saved my child's life. I'm both grateful and upset at the same. My New Year's resolution is to get more involved in world issues. If I'm this great at bitching about them, imagine the potential if I pooled all that bitchiness into action?

I might actually be useful. I might make an impact on the world through means other than making beautiful children, being a stylish trend-setter and writing intellectually stimulating blog entries.

Maybe I can come up with a line of organic, shade-grown, fair-traded bonbons.

Everyone says that the first child is a guinea pig. While true, I bet the mortality rate is higher for third children. My 'been there, done that' mentality is anything but baby-friendly. I've heard two stories now of people leaving their third or fourth infant at home because they forgot them. Forgot them! I'm not quite there yet, but I dare not have a fourth.

I might forget to name it.