Week 7 and glad to be going into week 8...

Week 7 and boy are we happy it's almost over. We had our first trip to the ER this weekend. Not once but twice. It started Friday night when Julia began to be fussy. She's been going through these bouts where she'd be happy and then get fussy so I didn't think it too out of the ordinary. Then for her 4am feeding, I discovered her diaper deposit had changed colors and was not the same consistency we were used to. So, that morning when Jason got home from work, I showed him the oddity and we called the pediatrician's office(have I mentioned they are open 7 days a week?). The nurse advised us it's not too out of the ordinary but to keep an eye on her.

So, we went about our day as normal. Then about 4pm, she decided she was done playing with me on her activity gym and began to fuss. I tried all the tricks she enjoys to calm her down with no success. Jason woke up to see if he could help any. Thankfully he decided to check her temp since she'd become so warm during this time. Good thing too. She was at 101.3 which is not good for babies. We called the nurse, she said take her to the emergency room and away we went.

Now for the fun stuff. Have you ever seen someone try to draw blood from a 7 week old's veins? Sad right? Now envision it as your 7 week old who is crying her beautiful little heart out and begging for them to release her so that she can snuggle Dad and Mom and try to forget the horrific trauma she's just gone through. Now take that a step further and try to imagine being said parent and watching the multiple lab techs try not once, twice or even 5 times to draw blood from her tiny little veins in her elbows. Yep, it took them 6 tries and even then they still had to lance her foot to get more.

So, 7 pokes at this point and she needed another shot to try and fight off whatever bug she's got. Stab again, poke number 8.

They tell us the preliminary reports look good, we're ok to go home, just keep an eye on her behavior and contact your primary physician asap on Monday. We go home thinking we are in the clear. Nope. We get a call Sunday evening from the Emergency room lab saying we needed to bring her back in due to her blood culture is growing something and they needed to give her more antibiotics to be safe. So back we go. Stabbing number 9.

They have an idea what the problem is but until the culture grows for 48-72 hours they are uncertain the proper path to take so they let us go after giving the additional shot.

Monday comes, we arrive at our Dr.'s appointment at 8:15am and pass her physical. He calls the lab to see what the results are. They believe she has not 1 but 2 bacterial infections. Both, he says, are not major but enough of an issue to cause her illness. One is a strain of strep and the other is a staph infection. Neither are the ones you typically hear about and both are rare for anyone to come down with. The staph infection is actually the bacteria that lives on our skin daily but somehow this one had gotten into her blood stream. The strep, we don't know. We passed the strep tests at birth so I wonder if it happened on one of our recent outings. Either way, both Jason and I have run the gauntlet of guilt and she had to get another shot of antibiotics bringing her poke count to 10.

We have to go back tomorrow morning for another follow up with our Dr. and I'm sure she's probably going to get another shot. Thankfully, she has been a trooper through it all. She's not been too fussy, has had her full appetite and is still blessing us with her smiles and shy chatter. I can't even begin to describe the agony of watching her go through all that. I cried and cried. Jason tried to spare me and told me to go ahead and wait outside the room but I couldn't. How could I leave my baby girl? She was in such pain and the least I could do was to stand by and swoop her up as quickly as I could. At least I was able to let the tears flow. Jason said she was staring straight at him when they were digging in her arms and just crying and there was nothing he could do. They had to try to get her blood and we had to let them.

So, here's to week 8. May we be blessed with good news tomorrow, a healthy baby girl and more beautiful sunshine smiles to come.


Take care,

Love, Angie