The last two years have been hectic for everyone. After a little over a year of social distancing and sheltering in place, the unthinkable happened: Josiah caught COVID (the original strand) from his father. I’ll preface this blog post by saying that my husband is an essential worker, so there has not really been any way to get around him leaving home and being exposed to the virus. Despite our best efforts, he ended up bringing the virus into our home.
Thankfully, I did not contract the virus so it was a little easier to take care of my family during the outbreak in our home.
Quarantine
I wish I could say that I handled the outbreak better during the first few days, but I was honestly a bit of an emotional wreck. I thought children were less likely to contract the virus- I was wrong. After getting through the initial shock and realizing that we were about to be quarantined for the next two weeks in our small on base home, I decided to get creative. My husband quarantined in the bedroom, and I hung clear shower curtains up in the hallway to separate one part of the house from the other.
It’s impossible to quarantine from a 3-year-old, so I moved into the living room with Josiah, and ordered him a tent from Amazon to sleep in so that there was some semblance of division between us. Thankfully his toddler mattress was the perfect fit for his tent, so he was comfy and not as miserable. Some of the other adjustments I made to our living situation to make his quarantine run smoother were grabbing a firestick for the TV in the garage (that I converted into a playroom for him at the start of the shutdown in 2020), so that he was able to go out into the garage during the daytime mask-less.
Prior to Siah catching COVID, we had started him on a vitamin regimen of elderberry and a toddler mutli-vitamin to help build his immune system. Once he contracted the virus, I started him on a vitamin c and zinc vitamin and rotated children’s Tylenol and Motrin every 4-6 hours to try to help break his fever. For congestion, runny nose, and mucus buildup I rotated Children’s Dimetapp, Children’s Mucinex, and Zarbees Natural Cough Syrup + Mucus (and the one with elderberry support) during the daytime and Zarbees Natural Cough Syrup + Mucus nighttime at night to help Josiah sleep better.
That combination worked wonders and after about three days his fever broke, leaving with him only a little congestion and runny nose. From that point on the meds given were for the symptoms he was experiencing as well as his daily vitamins.
We also went on daily walks(ensuring that we masked if were passing anyone) to make sure that he was getting adequate vitamin d and to open his lungs. We also wore mask religiously in the house, unless we were eating or if he was outside playing or sleeping (I wasn’t comfortable masking him while he slept).
It took more than 14 days for Josiah to test negative for COVID, but once he did I was extremely relieved.
Since then, we’ve kept him on his vitamin regimen and limited his exposure to other people.
I didn’t write this post as PSA. I just wanted to share with you that COVID is real and it can hit extremely close to home. We are incredibly blessed that our family got through an outbreak whole.
Stay safe. Protect your children, yourself, and your family. I’ll see you in the next blog.