Parenting really is one big roller coaster isn’t it? The minute you get over one hill and you start coasting down it towards easier times, another whopping hill looms up before you forcing you to grab onto the handlebars and pray for all you’re worth.

Yesterday, as my sick wife languished at home in an attempt at sleeping off this nausea we’ve shared, daycare called and said our youngest was crying and generally unhappy. My wife, God bless her, went and brought him home. Other than not having slept since 7 a.m. (by then it was 11:30) he seemed fine.

However, last night as I tried to bathe him, he kept rolling up on one soft little butt cheek and a closer examination revealed some terrible chafing, which my wife had already been treating with some Butt Paste (Boudreaux’s brand I think). It was so painful for him, he couldn’t even sit, which might explain his crying so much at daycare.

Like any good parent, I immediately started running through my head what had changed that could have caused it and I came up with the following possibilities:

• his antibiotic-induced diarrhea (love that word!)
• new diapers

It occurred to me that we had just recently (as in the last two days) switched to Huggies from Pampers because the Pampers weren’t getting the job done at night. Our older son used Huggies with no problems, but it’s possible our youngest is allergic to them. So, we found an old pack of leftover Pampers and are trying them.

In the meantime, my MIL called and suggested it might be a Yeast Infection since he’s been on antiobiotics and his body can’t fight it off right now. So, there’s another suspect, which prompted an immediate late-night trip to the drug store for some Monistat or something (I offered to go, figuring it’d be less embarrassing for a guy to be buying it, but my wife insisted that she’d go).

His bottom didn’t seem as irritated this morning, so who knows. We’ll keep up this new diaper, anti-yeast infection/butt paste regimine for a few days and see if it works.