Help. Been A&E 3x this week, keep getting told everything is fine

[Silversal]

Pls help!! DD had a viral infection and middle ear infection was on antibiotics, finished 2 days ago. Now DD has had low temps of 34.1 at night since Thursday but not during the day. I've taken her A&E 3x since then and they think it's odd but just said it's part of the viral infection. DD is easy to wake, taking a bottle, only had diarrhoea today but I started her on probiotics to counter the antibiotic gut flora stripping. She is wearing a 3.5tog and pj's under and the room is 24c so it is baffling me. I've tried different thermometers and also tested on myself as Dr in A&E questioned my thermometer accuracy. She eventually warms up after a bottle, me putting a coat on her and a duvet when she starts sweating and then cools again. This is only happening at night. Before bed and during the day she is 36.3/4. Only other symptoms currently is a small cough, diarrhoea today and a slightly lower appetite (eating meals not snacks) I'm up all night with her checking her temp.

This is completely over the top @Silversal

its just a number. The number on the thermometer doesn’t really matter. There is huge misunderstanding about fevers etc on here that 39 is worse than 38 etc. go by how your child is in themselves. Stop taking her temperature for the sake of it. This is just madness on your part.

It wasn't nice isn't the summer having a bedroom that was 24 to 28.c, if I'd have had quilts and hats put me on I would have felt poorly from the heat and I would have been thrashing about.

Like others have said stop worrying if she's perfectly fine all day, at the end of the day the important signs of illness such as the lethargy etc will be impossible to judge accurately if the poor child can't have a decent nights sleep because she's too hot and being messed about with every half an hour. She needs sleep to avoid health issues.

Your core body temperature does from 1-2 degrees during sleep.

Throw away the thermometer.

I brought up 4 kids without one. You can tell if they are hot or not and then you have to look holistically at how they are. The fact that she is fine in herself in the day means that this is now a pattern and the docs have been right that she didn't have sepsis. I can understand you going the first time but when it's the same thing night after night doesn't that tell you it's just what her body is doing with this illness and it's not sinister?

This only happens at night? This is what happens when we sleep. When asleep our core drops by 1-2°c. 34.1°c is within normal range. Talk to your GP instead of the emergency department.

Have had this issue with my son a couple of times. First time we went to A&E as we read sepsis etc but they put it down to the fact he was getting over a virus where he’d had a high fever and it was just his body temperature trying to regulate again. Now we don’t worry and were told if it was anything sinister he wouldn’t be ok in himself x

Trust your instincts and observations in the day time. Eating, playing, alertness. If all seems well, no pain, no high fever then no need for calpol. Your daytime observations are good indicators of her medical state. Put away the thermometer, you can't see the wood for the trees because you're measuring so much and must be insane with sleep deprivation now.
When the air temp is 24 degrees, my kids want to sleep naked and will complain about the heat.
Calpol will make her sweat as the body tries to lower her temperature. Leave the calpol and thermometer alone and just observe, keep her in bed with you, don't worry about clothing, just rest and watch.

A&E have said there was no emergency situation. Theyre unlilely to order further investigstions. Thsts your GPs job.

And as for no blood trsts because no "numbing cream". If it was an emergency theyd do it without the cream, that they didnt suggests it was not urgent.

Well, I disagree with the vast majority of posters. 34.1 is not a normal body temperature for a child, even in the middle of the night.

@Silversal when my DD was little and had a virus, she was kept in for 3 nights because her temp kept dropping to 34.1 (the exact same number) and the hospital couldn’t work out why. She was only discharged once she could maintain a normal temp across 3 hours. Can’t quite remember exact age but she was a toddler at the time.

Also double checked this with Chat GPT, the known online medical professional - see attached. Don’t let strangers on the internet (or AI) make you feel like you’re going mad when you’re looking out for your daughter. To me, not having a thermometer for your kids because your mother’s mother’s mother didnt have one isn’t something to aspire to. I remember taking DD to a GP once because she just didn’t seem herself and was crying. GP asked if she had a fever and for some strange reason I hadn’t thought to take her temp, the scathing look the GP gave me when I admitted my child was clearly unwell but I hadn’t even taken her temperature!

@Silversal i can see why you are worried, your child is not well at night and does have a low temperature at night. It sounds like she is completely normal in the day so the chances of long term problems due to her transient hypothermia are extremely unlikely. Just as there is no long term sequelae from transient hyperthermia when you have an infection.

you have got a second opinion in a private paediatric appointment coming up which you are within your rights to do. If i was worried and my gut was telling me something isn’t right that’s exactly what I would do too. I don’t think your will get the answers you’re looking for on mumsnet. Even if someone had been in the same position, every child/ situation is different and you don’t want to be falsely reassured or dismissed. I would be interested to know what the paediatrician says. Hope DD is better soon 🤍

She has sought “urgent medical advice” three times in a week and been told told there is nothing wrong.

@Silversal see also this more reliable source.

My normal temp is 34.5-35.5 confirmed by many doctors. It’s just my normal. Maybe she’s just a cold person like me?

As someone who used to be obsessed with taking temperatures, both my sons' normal nighttime temps were 35 point something and often they'd drop to 34 point something for a short length of time. None of our temperatures went above 36.8 unless we were ill.

Youngest son with smaller ear holes always had lower temps so I think it makes a difference how far in the ear the thermometer goes.

I am not putting the quilt and hat on her when she is going to sleep. The room naturally is 23/24 at 8pm her temp is 36.4 then, it dips to 22 by 1am when her temp dips to 34c I then put the heating on to 25 which reads as 28 on the baby monitor. I put a hat and the duvet on her for half an hour to get her temp up. She is not sleeping in it for the rest of the night. Paediatrician is waiting on two blood results still, so I will know more then, thinks she may have low iron from seeing her today. Said I've done the right thing coming to see him as the A&E I took her to, he works as a consultant there 1 day a week and they often have junior Dr's on. I've seen him a few times over the last year as my DD has had some investigations.

@BellesAndGraces she's been to A&E three times and has been told there's nothing wrong.

A bedroom temperature of 25 degrees is ridiculously high OP - then you're adding a hat and a duvet on top of her. Of course her body temperature is dropping - you're massively overheating her.

Have you told the paediatrician the temperature of the bedroom and what your dd is wearing and sleeping under @Silversal?

This will help them understand what’s going on, building a complete clinical picture alongside the blood results.

A&E are sometimes wrong. In this case, the consultant the OP has seen for a second opinion seems to agree with OP’s course of action.
GPs always advise parents, particularly mothers, to trust their instincts about whether their child is unwell or displaying a concerning symptom. IME, bar those parents that are clearly time wasters or have Munchausen by proxy (which the OP doesn’t seem to be/have), doctors would always rather see a toddler multiple times about the same symptom than have it ignored. After reading about what happened to Martha Mills, I would never tell a parent to stop worrying about a symptom that is ordinarily red flagged just because A&E told them it was fine, even if strangers on Mumsnet were telling me otherwise. I would sooner be vilified as overly anxious than be planning my child’s funeral.

If you’re a paediatrician and a patient comes in and says my child’s temp is dropping to 34.1 at night, surely the first questions you ask are temp of the room and clothing. If they failed to ask then they’re negligent and there is nothing to suggest that’s the case.

Nope. Mumsnet should never ever be a source of resolving a medical issue. So much bad information and guessing.

I hate people wasting NHS time but I'd rather OP do a fourth trip to get actual medical advice than listen to someone on here coming in hot with misremembered GCSE biology and something go horribly wrong.

A&E is sometimes wrong. BUT SHE HAS BEEN 3 TIMES.

unnecessary and ridiculous. If the child was presenting with worrying symptoms they wouldn't have postponed the blood test due to no numbing cream.

to wait up and put a hat and coat on a sleeping child 'until they warm up' in an already hot room is ridiculous.

it's probably all messing with her temperature regulation and she's trying desperately to cool herself down!

GPs always advise parents, particularly mothers, to trust their instincts about whether their child is unwell or displaying a concerning symptom.

I totally agree with this, but in this case it seems that OP feels her child is seemingly well/ behaving normally etc. it's just an anxiety about a numerical reading on the thermometer- she says that her DD even feels normal to touch. So I don't think this is a case of mothers instincts that something isn't right (based on knowing your child and perceiving something is not right in them) , but an anxiety that is being cause by obsessively checking her temp and fixating on the readings, rather than looking at the bigger picture that her child seems well. Iykwim. Speaking as someone who has health anxiety- it can do that to you..

That is still far too warm.

Optimal temperature for a bedroom is 16-18 degrees.

Have you told the medical staff about the room temp and warming her up with a hat and blanket? They will need to know this to have the full picture.

OP do you have health anxiety?
you shouldn't be putting a hat and coat and extra blankets and increasing the temperature of her room at any point of the night.

this can mess up her ability to regulate her temperature.