Weight: Girlfriend had a bit of a dip in weight due to being sick last week, which I'll write about in Medical Issues below. Anyway, she's 16 pounds, 15 ounces -- just an ounce above where she was a month ago.
Sleep: Sleep has been hit and miss lately because of Lizzie being sick. She got pretty spoiled because we held her constantly when she had a temperature, so I think she forgot how to sleep in her crib ;) Anyway, I'm struggling with what to do in the middle of the night when she wakes. Anyone have any suggestions? Sometimes she'll go back to sleep without help, sometimes she just needs her pacifier, but sometimes she needs a rocking session -- which we do not mind doing at all, but sometimes she'll fall fast asleep while we rock her, and the moment her head hits the mattress when we put her down, she wakes! This happened probably four times one night (er, morning). So then I decided she should lie in her crib and I'd stay with her, rubbing her tummy… Lord knows that didn't work, because while I attempted to soothe her, she just cried -- hard. So then I decided maybe I needed to leave because she wanted me to pick her up since I was standing right there next to her crib (cry-it-out… eek!)… but we tried that for a half hour, and that didn't work either. So, in total, we lost an hour and a half of sleep in the middle of the night with the CIO method. Dang. And she was just getting more and more upset as the moments ticked by… so what's a momma to do? Suggestions are welcome :) I was able to put her down one night when she was awake, and I sat in her rocker. She rolled over and peeked at me through the crib slats and eventually went to sleep on her tummy… I felt like I'd won a huge victory!
Medical Issues: [Warning: this is terribly long! Feel welcome to skim. Or skip :)] Oofsch. Where do I even start! A couple of Fridays ago, girlfriend's daycare teachers mentioned she seemed really warm, but that she didn't have a temperature. That night, however, she wouldn't take a bottle before bedtime, and about an hour after she was asleep, she threw up :( Poor baby. About 15 minutes later, she threw up again. Double sad! Anyway, she was ridiculously happy after that and was hungry for a bottle, so I figured we were out of the woods. She did have a temperature, right around 100 degrees, but I just figured (er, hoped) it would pass, and she had a really nasty, dry cough as well.
The next morning, girlfriend woke up with a 101 degree temperature. She was still her happy, smiley self and didn't seem any different and her eating habits were the same, so we gave her some Motrin and enjoyed the day. That icky cough continued, along with a rattly chest, but no throwing up -- although we were lucky enough to have a number of "loose" diapers…
Sunday morning, girlfriend woke up with a 100 degree temp, and I did a little fist-pump, assuming this meant we were improving. So we gave her some Motrin again and headed to mass, because she was still so, so happy and smiley -- no mood change, so she must not feel too bad! Anyway, that afternoon when she woke up from naps, she had a temperature of 104 degrees. That I wasn't quite so okay with, so after a few phone calls to Andy (he had to go in and work on a project at work that was close to deadline) and my mom, and between Andy and his dad, I decided going in to the ER would be a good decision. So in we went.
When we got there, they did a chest x-ray (so sad to see your little baby go in the apparatus they use for chest x-rays!) and some blood work (but no RSV swab). These came back showing pneumonia, so they started her on some potent antibiotics (which, by the way, she promptly threw up all over herself and all over me in the ER. Sweet. She rode home naked + a diaper + blanket over her, and I rode home in barf-covered clothes. Sweet).
On Monday, sweet girl woke up with a normal fever (hooray!), but still definitely not herself. Very lethargic, snuggly and really wanting Mommy. Her eyes were really watery, and that nasty cough continued -- sometimes she was coughing probably 30 times in a row before it let up :( But we'd just been into the ER, and I talked to her doctor's nurse about it, and the general consensus was to give it some more time and let her body start to get better. We still did daycare because her temp was down, but I think she probably would have loved to stay home and just snuggle all day long (and I think I would have, too... but hindsight is 20/20 -- next time).
Tuesday was a snow day, so I got to stay home with her all day :) She seemed much better. No fever, but still not herself completely and very little appetite. Throughout the past few days of this illness, her appetite was pretty horrible. I was quite concerned with dehydration -- she would drink water, but not milk and not Pedialyte or juice -- she hates them both! Since Friday, I'll bet we were changing only two not-very-wet diapers per day. But whenever I brought this up with her doctors/nurses, they all said that this was fine.
Fast forward to Wednesday morning. No temperature, still acting "off", but since she had a good day the day before, I figured she was totally fine to head to daycare. Upon waking, she only took about a half ounce of formula, which wasn't terribly surprising with her lack of appetite lately. About halfway there, girlfriend started crying in her carseat. I just assumed this meant she was sick of it and wanted out, which does happen from time to time. When we got to daycare and I took her out of her seat, however, the crying didn't stop. I tried different things that normally work -- showing her toys, distracting her with other kids, putting her down to let her "walk", offering a bottle (since she'd had so little that morning)... nothing worked. She was pushing away from me, while at the same time grabbing on as tightly as she could, and by this point, she was screaming. As in, I've never heard my baby cry like that or make those sounds before. After five minutes of this, I decided it was time to leave daycare and take her to the ER. She was writhing in my arms so much that I wasn't sure I'd be able to hang onto her without dropping her, and when I went to put her in her carseat, I could only get the chest buckle snapped -- she was arching her back and moving too much to even have a prayer of snapping the one between her little legs. But the drive to the hospital was only a few blocks, so I decided we'd be fine.
She continued to scream the few blocks to the hospital (which were, naturally, the longest few driven blocks of my life!). When we got to the ER, the screaming, writhing, crying, continued. Long story short: she stopped screaming about 45 minutes after we arrived at the hospital, and they determined that the cause of that issue was (wait for it)... gas. How anti-climactic, right? But still, what's a momma to do when her baby is crying and writhing in pain in a way they've never seen before? Anyway, they did x-rays of her chest, which came back perfect this time and they did blood work, which also came back perfect this time. But the unsettling part was that her oxygen levels were around 84%. Anyway, after a lot of questions, the ER doc finally consulted a pediatrician to see what we should do. The pediatrician immediately opted to admit Lizzie to the hospital to monitor her oxygen levels and to give her a little oxygen boost. Girlfriend hated the oxygen tube in her nose for the first hour or so -- she kept trying to take it out and would get so mad :( Poor baby.
We crossed our fingers that we wouldn't have an overnight stay, but they seemed pretty confident that it would be. When the pediatrician arrived, Lizzie had been on 100% oxygen. They dropped her down to 50% oxygen, and her oxygen levels fell again -- which meant her body still wasn't doing its job at that point, so they turned it back up to full-power. The pediatrician informed us of a few interesting things: he thought she either had RSV or whooping cough (which she is vaccinated against, so she can still get it, but as a milder case), but that it would be too late to tell with typical tests because they were working their way out of her system now, and they'd have to be cultured out -- not worth our money, he said, just to satisfy our curiosity. He also mentioned that she should have been in isolation when she first came down with it. Whoopsies. Mom of the year who sent her baby to daycare. But how was I to know?! We had been in the ER and they told us she was good-to-go with her antibiotics when they discharged us. And finally, he said this should really be the wrap-up of her hospital stay... not day one of her hospital stay. So, in so many words: girlfriend should have probably been hospitalized on Sunday, and it was now Wednesday. Again, hindsight is 20/20. And they doc who saw her on Sunday wasn't a pediatrician, he was an ER doc, so maybe he wasn't as versed in dealing with little bitty babies. Nothing can be done about it now, and Lizzie was in good hands on Wednesday, so we didn't dwell.
Anyway, he remained skeptical that we'd go home that night, and said he wanted to see Lizzie on NO oxygen and with a 91%+ oxygen level on her own while sleeping (oxygen levels drop while sleeping). Before he left, he turned her oxygen off to see how she'd do. She napped shortly after he left and initially, her levels were dipping down into that 80% range. But slowly, they improved... and eventually, they stayed around 92, 93, 94% consistently. When she woke up from her nap, they jumped to 96 - 98%, and within a few hours, she had periods of 100% oxygenation! Woohoo, girlfriend! She received two nebulizer treatments that afternoon/evening, and when the pediatrician came back to see her around 7:30, he was pleased to hear about and see that her levels had much improved. Upon seeing this, he opted to discharge her that night to go home and sleep in her own (non-jail cell looking) crib... yahoo! He commented how much better she looked and how much happier she was acting just eight hours after he'd seen her last. And she was -- like a completely different baby than she was earlier in the day.
So we went home, and girlfriend slept through the night like a dream... and the cough is gone now (thank you, nebulizer treatments!) and she's back to her happy, happy, happy self again. Now our goal is to stay completely healthy for the rest of the winter... which should be over anytime, right? Right?
On Monday, sweet girl woke up with a normal fever (hooray!), but still definitely not herself. Very lethargic, snuggly and really wanting Mommy. Her eyes were really watery, and that nasty cough continued -- sometimes she was coughing probably 30 times in a row before it let up :( But we'd just been into the ER, and I talked to her doctor's nurse about it, and the general consensus was to give it some more time and let her body start to get better. We still did daycare because her temp was down, but I think she probably would have loved to stay home and just snuggle all day long (and I think I would have, too... but hindsight is 20/20 -- next time).
Tuesday was a snow day, so I got to stay home with her all day :) She seemed much better. No fever, but still not herself completely and very little appetite. Throughout the past few days of this illness, her appetite was pretty horrible. I was quite concerned with dehydration -- she would drink water, but not milk and not Pedialyte or juice -- she hates them both! Since Friday, I'll bet we were changing only two not-very-wet diapers per day. But whenever I brought this up with her doctors/nurses, they all said that this was fine.
Fast forward to Wednesday morning. No temperature, still acting "off", but since she had a good day the day before, I figured she was totally fine to head to daycare. Upon waking, she only took about a half ounce of formula, which wasn't terribly surprising with her lack of appetite lately. About halfway there, girlfriend started crying in her carseat. I just assumed this meant she was sick of it and wanted out, which does happen from time to time. When we got to daycare and I took her out of her seat, however, the crying didn't stop. I tried different things that normally work -- showing her toys, distracting her with other kids, putting her down to let her "walk", offering a bottle (since she'd had so little that morning)... nothing worked. She was pushing away from me, while at the same time grabbing on as tightly as she could, and by this point, she was screaming. As in, I've never heard my baby cry like that or make those sounds before. After five minutes of this, I decided it was time to leave daycare and take her to the ER. She was writhing in my arms so much that I wasn't sure I'd be able to hang onto her without dropping her, and when I went to put her in her carseat, I could only get the chest buckle snapped -- she was arching her back and moving too much to even have a prayer of snapping the one between her little legs. But the drive to the hospital was only a few blocks, so I decided we'd be fine.
She continued to scream the few blocks to the hospital (which were, naturally, the longest few driven blocks of my life!). When we got to the ER, the screaming, writhing, crying, continued. Long story short: she stopped screaming about 45 minutes after we arrived at the hospital, and they determined that the cause of that issue was (wait for it)... gas. How anti-climactic, right? But still, what's a momma to do when her baby is crying and writhing in pain in a way they've never seen before? Anyway, they did x-rays of her chest, which came back perfect this time and they did blood work, which also came back perfect this time. But the unsettling part was that her oxygen levels were around 84%. Anyway, after a lot of questions, the ER doc finally consulted a pediatrician to see what we should do. The pediatrician immediately opted to admit Lizzie to the hospital to monitor her oxygen levels and to give her a little oxygen boost. Girlfriend hated the oxygen tube in her nose for the first hour or so -- she kept trying to take it out and would get so mad :( Poor baby.
We crossed our fingers that we wouldn't have an overnight stay, but they seemed pretty confident that it would be. When the pediatrician arrived, Lizzie had been on 100% oxygen. They dropped her down to 50% oxygen, and her oxygen levels fell again -- which meant her body still wasn't doing its job at that point, so they turned it back up to full-power. The pediatrician informed us of a few interesting things: he thought she either had RSV or whooping cough (which she is vaccinated against, so she can still get it, but as a milder case), but that it would be too late to tell with typical tests because they were working their way out of her system now, and they'd have to be cultured out -- not worth our money, he said, just to satisfy our curiosity. He also mentioned that she should have been in isolation when she first came down with it. Whoopsies. Mom of the year who sent her baby to daycare. But how was I to know?! We had been in the ER and they told us she was good-to-go with her antibiotics when they discharged us. And finally, he said this should really be the wrap-up of her hospital stay... not day one of her hospital stay. So, in so many words: girlfriend should have probably been hospitalized on Sunday, and it was now Wednesday. Again, hindsight is 20/20. And they doc who saw her on Sunday wasn't a pediatrician, he was an ER doc, so maybe he wasn't as versed in dealing with little bitty babies. Nothing can be done about it now, and Lizzie was in good hands on Wednesday, so we didn't dwell.
Anyway, he remained skeptical that we'd go home that night, and said he wanted to see Lizzie on NO oxygen and with a 91%+ oxygen level on her own while sleeping (oxygen levels drop while sleeping). Before he left, he turned her oxygen off to see how she'd do. She napped shortly after he left and initially, her levels were dipping down into that 80% range. But slowly, they improved... and eventually, they stayed around 92, 93, 94% consistently. When she woke up from her nap, they jumped to 96 - 98%, and within a few hours, she had periods of 100% oxygenation! Woohoo, girlfriend! She received two nebulizer treatments that afternoon/evening, and when the pediatrician came back to see her around 7:30, he was pleased to hear about and see that her levels had much improved. Upon seeing this, he opted to discharge her that night to go home and sleep in her own (non-jail cell looking) crib... yahoo! He commented how much better she looked and how much happier she was acting just eight hours after he'd seen her last. And she was -- like a completely different baby than she was earlier in the day.
So we went home, and girlfriend slept through the night like a dream... and the cough is gone now (thank you, nebulizer treatments!) and she's back to her happy, happy, happy self again. Now our goal is to stay completely healthy for the rest of the winter... which should be over anytime, right? Right?
Clothes: We're in three to six month clothes and three to six month jammies!
Socialite!: Hanging out with daycare friends and seeing Auntie Jenny again, who was around on part of her spring break this week :)
Socialite!: Hanging out with daycare friends and seeing Auntie Jenny again, who was around on part of her spring break this week :)
Diet: Still into anything and everything, food-wise. Girlfriend and I shared fajitas when we went out to eat over the weekend, and she ended up liking the red bell peppers more than she liked the chicken... ha! It was too funny. She couldn't get enough of 'em :)
Baby Gear Love: Anything she can stand next to and anything she can shake and make noise with -- her favorite being a pill bottle :) Andy doesn't like when I let her shake those because she's holding a couple bottles of my prescriptions from Target and it just looks weird, but they make such fun noises and make her so happy that I can't resist letting her shake them :)
Crying: Lizzie is such a happy babe. She only cries when she's hungry or tired.
Milestones: We spent so much of the week nursing that sickness that girlfriend is just returning to herself again, so we don't have a lot of new things to share. Still giving lots of kisses, saying "dadadada" now, and looking surprisingly closer to crawling every single day. We'll see...
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