I'm VERY late blogging about this, but such is life these days! In September, we had a little scare with miss Aubrey! She came down with a fever and ended up in the hospital for 3 nights. It was not a fun experience!
That Thursday (9/15), Caleb went to MDO and Aubrey and I hung around the house. She slept the entire day and at the time, I did not think too much of it because she was/is still a sleepy head and still sleeps a lot in general. We picked Caleb up from MDO at 2:15pm and then came home. I put her down in her bouncer after we got home and was working on printing some stuff I needed to take to our Sunday school Ladies Night Out that I was planning to go to that night. I was having issues with the printer, Caleb was acting up and I was also just not feeling too well myself. I had this weird all-over muscle achiness/soreness that had started the day before. I had no other symptoms and otherwise felt fine, but it was a bit of a rough afternoon. Oh, I should also mention that Aubrey had just gone through what I assumed to be her 6-week growth spurt by eating every 2 hours from Mon-Weds of that week. SO, I was a little tired and a little stressed. All of a sudden, Aubrey woke up choking and coughing up mucus. She did this for a minute or so and it freaked me out. By this time, I kinda had a little mommy meltdown so I called Rhett and asked if he could come home from work early. He said he'd get home as soon as he could and I think he got home around 4pm.
By the time he got home, things had settled down a bit and Aubrey was back to sleep. However, when she was awake and crying, I had noticed that her cry just sounded different. I thought it sounded weak. She didn't feel warm to me, so I did not take her temperature right away. After Rhett got home, I decided that I'd just have him go drop off the stuff I needed to take to Ladies Night Out and I would just stay at home. We fed Caleb and then he went with Rhett to drop it off at our friends, the Pendletons', house. They also had to go by the Verizon store for something for Rhett's phone. By the time he got home it was nearly 9pm. He had picked up Firehouse subs for us and we sat down to eat after he quickly put Caleb to bed. Aubrey was awake and sitting in the bouncer by me in the kitchen while I ate. She got fussy and started crying and this time, I was sure that her cry sounded different...very weak-sounding and muffled. To me, she still did not feel warm but I kept telling Rhett that I thought something was wrong with her and she was freaking me out. He said let's just go ahead and take her temperature just to see. Well, we could not find our digital rectal thermometer! I have another thermometer that I have for adult use, but I figured it would work just fine rectally, especially since we didn't have anything else. Luckily, I have those little disposable plastic covers for it so we took her temperature with that. It said 100.7. Now, I sometimes have a hard time believing these cheap-o thermometers so I still wasn't completely convinced, especially since neither of us thought she felt warm. We decided to look for the other thermometer again, and I thought it was in Caleb's closet so Rhett snuck in there and tried to quietly search for it. He did end up finding it and that thermometer said 101.3. SO, we figured by these two readings that she must, in fact, have a fever.
By this time, it was feeding time again so I sat down to feed her and Rhett called his mom (she's a nurser practitioner). She told us what all would happen if we took her in the to ER and she indeed did have a fever - none of it sounded good! We decided to finish feeding her and then take her temp once again to double check. When we did, she did still have a fever so we decided that Rhett would take her to the Pediatric Urgent Care clinic first before heading into the full-blown ER experience. It was about 10:45pm and they close at 11pm so I called to see if they had an age minimum. The lady told me birth to 17 years...so Rhett headed there. They pretty much turned him away at the door and said they don't see babies that young. Um, hello! You just told me BIRTH to 17 years! Anyway, by this time we resolved to just go ahead and take her to the ER. I guess we were delaying the inevitable but we just wanted to make absolute certain that she needed to go (given all that they would have to do to her). I also put in a call to our pediatric clinic after hours line just to talk to someone there about it. Rhett's mom suggested taking her to a children's hospital if we could because she knew they would do a spinal tap on her and the pediatric ER doctors would have much more experience with this. Since we are close to Texas Children's, he left to take her there and then I was going to meet him once his dad arrived to stay with Caleb. Luckily, he was at their house in Magnolia (35 minutes away) even though his mom happened to be back in Louisiana with her mom.
After Rhett left for Tx Children's, our pedi clinic called and the doctor there said to definitely take her in just because she was only 7 weeks old and fever in a baby that young can be very serious. I knew that all along but we didn't want to make an ER trip if our janky thermometers were giving us a bad reading. But, better safe than sorry, I guess. I told her Rhett had already left for the hospital and she asked which TCH he was going to - Med Center or Katy? I told her we didn't know there was one in Katy and that he was headed to the Med Center. She said she would recommend going to Katy because the wait should be much shorter than at the main hospital. I called Rhett and told him to detour and head to Katy instead. This turned out to be a much better idea because they pretty much got in immediately. Supposedly, the wait at the main hospital in the Med Center can be over several hours - yikes!
Rhett's dad got to our house around 11:30pm and I headed straight to TCH-Katy. When I got there, they were attempting to start an IV, which is no easy task on such a young baby, even for a well-trained professional. I think it took the guy 3 attempts and he finally got one started in her right hand. We answered all the questions and filled out paper work and they took a blood sample to test for bacterial infection. They also needed a urine sample (to test for UTI) and put this collection bag over her privates to try to collect urine. That was interesting - I'd never seen one of those and it was not the easiest to collect urine from her. It kept leaking and they had to change it out several times. Also, since she was so young and infections can be so dangerous in young infants, they had to test for bacterial meningitis. This meant a spinal tap - not fun! We both opted to leave the room while they did it. I just could not bear to watch. It was hard enough hearing her cries from out in the hallway. :-(
Once they finished all their poking and prodding, I was able to nurse her (which was a challenge with her hooked up to the IV). She was a tired little girl and just ate and went to sleep. They gave her fluids and IV antibiotics in case it was a bacterial infection. She also got acetaminophen and this actually broke her fever for a time. The doctor from the floor where they were sending us came down to see us and she asked questions and listened to Aubrey's breathing, heart, etc. She heard Aubrey's heart murmur and said something about it, so I explained we already knew she had one and she'd been checked out and everything was "normal" with that. She said something to the effect that it didn't sound normal to her and that we would need to do an ECHO while she was in the hospital. She did say that fever can make murmurs sound louder, but just the way she said "it doesn't sound normal to me" really freaked me out. I was already so worried about her fever and this did not help one bit! (more on that later).
Rhett was trying to sleep in the ER room but then decided he'd go out to the car and sleep while we waited to be moved to a room. I attempted to sleep on the gurney holding her, but it wasn't easy and people kept coming in and out....bad thing about hospitals!! (well, good thing too!) We did finally get moved to a room at around 4:30am. The rooms there (actually the whole hospital) are very nice and accomodating to families. The room was huge and had a sleeper sofa-type thing that slept 2 adults. Also, as a nursing mom, I got all meals for "free" (I'm sure we paid for it somehow) and got to use their awesome hospital-grade Medela breastpump. We settled in and tried to sleep as much as possible. By this time (Friday morning) we were exhausted! Luckily, for the first 24 hours, all Aubrey did was sleep. She also did really well nursing that first day, too. We were told this was a good sign that she was both sleeping and eating well. Rhett and I took turns going home to shower and bring back other things we needed for our stay. It was pretty much what you would expect from a hospital stay....vitals every four hours. I remembered this well from my own hospital stay when I was on bedrest! They gave her acetaminophen around the clock for the fever and would check one hour after each dose to see if her fever went down. A lot of times, her fever would go down and even broke a few times but there were other times it did not go down. Honestly, it has been so long that I can't remember what her highest temp was but I think it was around 101.7 or so. It really could have been much worse and we are thankful it didn't get any higher!
We had to keep her undressed and uncovered as much as possible but she did not like that! She wanted to stay wrapped up so if we unwrapped her too much she would not sleep well. Like I said, the first 24 hours, she slept constantly. Then Friday night she did NOT want to sleep and that was a pretty miserable night. She would sleep some if one of us was holding her, but she would not sleep at all if you put her down. We tried to take turns holding her. Rhett could get some sleep while holding her but I just could not. I was miserable and exhausted. Not to mention, I still had to nurse her and she was still get vitals and APAP every four hours! Man, hospitals are not made for sleeping!
Saturday, we were told that her 24 hour cultures had come back negative so that was a good sign! We still had to wait 48 hours total for a definitive answer, though. Saturday was much of the same...vitals, APAP, temp checks, etc. Sorry if this is TMI but gotta document the details.....she sprayed poop all over one of our poor nurses when she was getting her temp checked, LOL. Those sweet pediatric nurses...I'm sure they get much worse than that all the time! Also, on Saturday she did not nurse very well. I had to pump quite a bit and this actually continued through Monday. She just seemed too tired to want to work for it so we mostly bottle fed her on these days. Sunday morning, we got the results back from the 48 hour cultures and they were negative - praise the LORD! This meant that it was a virus and it just had to run it's course so we were released to go home and got home sometime in the afternoon. By this time, she had developed a rash all over her little body (another sign of rash and the same rash Caleb had earlier in the week) I continued with temp checks and APAP at home and her fever actually broke around midnight on Sunday night! Again, she continued to not want to sleep unless she was being held so we tried our best to do this while sleeping on the couch. I pretty much got no sleep b/c I just could not sleep while holding her. I don't know why but it was impossible. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Caleb went to Rhett's parents' house for the weekend and then we asked if he could stay until Wednesday b/c Rhett had to go back to work. There was no way I would have been able to care for him AND her while she was still so sick and I was so exhausted. We were very thankful that Rhett's parents kept him for us and that they live close enough that his dad was able to come over on short notice!
Monday morning, I called for an appointment with her pediatrician and they worked us in that afternoon. She was still fever-free but the rash had gotten much, much worse. She was covered in it and looked so sad and pathetic. We were told to come back for another checkup on Wednesday. I asked the NP about what the hospital doc had said about her murmur and needing an ECHO (which they later told us they had decided against) and the NP listened and said that the murmur did sound louder than before (she'd listened to it several times, although I have to say that I don't know how they remember how loud it is??). She said she thought doing an ECHO just to be safe was a good idea but we'd wait til she was all better. (this is the reason we had the ECHO done and later found out that all is well with her little heart!!).
Anyway, I think I have rambled on enough. This is the longest post EVER and probably doesn't make much sense b/c I wrote half of it over a month ago and now I'm just trying to get it finished once and for all!!! Aubrey continued to stay fever free after midnight on Sunday and slowly but surely got back to her normal self. I think she finally started feeling noticeably better that weekend after all of this happened. And we were so excited to see Caleb that Wednesday - Thurs to Weds was too long!!
Oh, and since all of this I have been so afraid of her getting sick again!! I have not even put her in the nursery at church yet and Caleb went in around 2 months. We are going to have to soon, though, because she is getting more loud and talkative and too distracting during church and Sunday school. I'm not ready, but will have to do it anyway.
Ok, here are the few pics I took on my cell during our hospital stay.....
poor little baby, she was so exhausted! (and this was before she found her thumb and lost most of her hair - ha!)
giant crib...sick little baby....
this was after they took her IV out. you can see the little bruise on her hand where they attempted it.
back home but still feeling crummy....
and this was after Caleb got home from being spoiled rotten at NiNi and G-Dad's. he was crying saying "I wanna go to NiNi's houfe!!!" LOL
1 comment:
That was such a scare! Praise the Lord that everything turned out ok!
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