Baby's First ER Visit!

Emily and I have been fighting a nasty cold for about the past week. On Saturday morning at about 230a I woke up and checked on her-- she had been extremely fussy and was having a lot of difficulty breathing due to excessive congestion and a plugged up nose. When I went in her room I found her sleeping, but breathing very rapidly-- about once per second-- and very sweaty. I woke Paul up because she didn’t seem “right” to me. He looked at her briefly and decided that yes, she needed to go to the Emergency Department. All along he was thinking she would need an Albuterol breathing treatment but of course we didn’t have the Albuterol nor the spacer to administer it....so, off we hurried in the middle of the night.


When we got to the ED she was seen very quickly (thank Heavens!) Her oxygen saturation was only in the low 80s (good is 90+, great is 100%). Also, she had a fever of 102. She was breathing about 60x per minute (my previous estimate had been right on). In addition, her heart rate was between 170-190 bpm...pretty fast, even for a baby. They took her back to a room and gave her a nasal cannula with 1 liter of oxygen. She hated the cannula-- I cannot say this enough! She tried so many times to tear it off! Then she was examined by the Peds resident on call that night, who said she sounded congested and had low O2 sats and possibly had RSV. At this point, I started getting very scared. People were talking in hushed tones, Paul thought he heard the term “rapid response” which is another way of saying “intubation” and that really freaked me out. All I could think about was how much she had been out with other people recently- traveling, going to the mall, playing with other kids, etc. Last year around this time we were practically quarantined trying to NOT get RSV. The only good thing was that this year, she would be 14 months old battling RSV instead of 8 weeks.


I held her tightly and tried to console her-- anytime someone came near her she just cried and cried. She was so confused about being up in the middle of the night, being bothered with wires and weird people coming to listen to her, touch her, take her temperature rectally (she is definitely NOT fond of that...who would be?!) I kept rocking her and it seemed like she would finally fall asleep, only to have a machine start beeping, or someone come in to look at her, etc. So annoying and stressful! At one point she had to have a screening done for RSV- this involved sliding a flexible-tipped syringe up inside her nose and withdrawing a sample of mucous...I don’t have to tell you how much she hated this. Poor muffin. Also, a respiratory therapist came and gave her an albuterol breathing treatment, which, while very traumatizing for Emmy, provided instant relief. She could breathe bigger breaths, her heart rate slowed down, and her O2 sats came up to the 90+ area. Big relief.


Once the RSV and influenza screens came back (both negative, hooray!) we were admitted to the pediatrics floor of the hospital.

(We had to wait for the screening to come back so they would know if we needed to be in Isolation or not-- it turns out that there Isolation sign was hung on her doorway anyway, even though both screen came back negative). She rode in my lap in a wheelchair up to the 8th floor. We got her settled into her room at about 5am and she was seen by a few more doctors and nurses. All during this time she was eating, drinking, making wet/dirty diapers, etc.


Around 10 I left to go let the dogs out and get that poor girl some toys-- all I had grabbed before we left was her “Silky”, a small satin/velour blanket thing that she sleeps with. When I got back to the hospital she had been lowered to 1/2 liter of O2 and had pulled her cannula over to really her cheek area, not anywhere near her nose. Then the docs decided that she could try no oxygen at all, and she kept her sats up around the 94-100 mark on room air which was so relieving.


She was served a tray of Inedible Delights for lunch so Paul’s mom Jane (Granny) went down to the cafeteria and got her a grilled cheese sandwich, which she picked at. She MUCH preferred the ice cream that was on her tray, but I only gave her a few little bites (maybe 2-3 tsp total) because it was only the second time in her life to have ice cream and I was afraid she would get sick from it.


She finally took a 1 hour nap (keep in mind, we had all been up since 2am!) but was back jumping up and down in the metal crib shortly after. The nurses kept coming in and saying, “What is she doing? It must be the albuterol-- it can make them hyper” but we just laughed and said that jumping in her crib is just what she does! Albuterol had nothing to do with it!


Around 3pm I had the nurses page the on call resident again- I really didn’t see any reason for her to stay in the hospital where she obviously couldn’t rest if she was having good saturations, her heart rate had slowed, and she was eating/drinking/making dirty diapers. Luckily for us, the resident completely agreed and discharged us. At 3 the respiratory therapist returned and gave her albuterol treatment #3 and we were home by 4pm. I figured she would go right to sleep in the car and I would put her to bed very early, but when we got home she was up and ready to play again! Can you believe that? So, we played with her and kept her up until 6pm, at which time she had a quick bath, cup, and bed. She jumped in her crib until about 6:15 (seriously....I wish we could bottle up her energy and sell it!) and then I didn’t hear another peep from her room until 6:30am the NEXT morning! I went to bed at 6:30 (also exhausted from a very long day!) and, aside from going in to check on her 4-5 times during the night, slept completely uninterrupted until she got up at 6:30 Sunday. Bliss!


Today (Monday) we took her to see her regular pediatrician for a follow up visit. She said Emily looks great but still is congested. She said not to use the albuterol “just because”-- to save it for when she really does need a treatment. We had brought it with us just in case she needed it but the doctor said she was OK. We are so glad to have her home and (sort of) healthy. I don’t want to go back to the ED for a long, long time!

Baby's First ER Visit!

Emily and I have been fighting a nasty cold for about the past week. On Saturday morning at about 230a I woke up and checked on her-- she had been extremely fussy and was having a lot of difficulty breathing due to excessive congestion and a plugged up nose. When I went in her room I found her sleeping, but breathing very rapidly-- about once per second-- and very sweaty. I woke Paul up because she didn’t seem “right” to me. He looked at her briefly and decided that yes, she needed to go to the Emergency Department. All along he was thinking she would need an Albuterol breathing treatment but of course we didn’t have the Albuterol nor the spacer to administer it....so, off we hurried in the middle of the night.


When we got to the ED she was seen very quickly (thank Heavens!) Her oxygen saturation was only in the low 80s (good is 90+, great is 100%). Also, she had a fever of 102. She was breathing about 60x per minute (my previous estimate had been right on). In addition, her heart rate was between 170-190 bpm...pretty fast, even for a baby. They took her back to a room and gave her a nasal cannula with 1 liter of oxygen. She hated the cannula-- I cannot say this enough! She tried so many times to tear it off! Then she was examined by the Peds resident on call that night, who said she sounded congested and had low O2 sats and possibly had RSV. At this point, I started getting very scared. People were talking in hushed tones, Paul thought he heard the term “rapid response” which is another way of saying “intubation” and that really freaked me out. All I could think about was how much she had been out with other people recently- traveling, going to the mall, playing with other kids, etc. Last year around this time we were practically quarantined trying to NOT get RSV. The only good thing was that this year, she would be 14 months old battling RSV instead of 8 weeks.


I held her tightly and tried to console her-- anytime someone came near her she just cried and cried. She was so confused about being up in the middle of the night, being bothered with wires and weird people coming to listen to her, touch her, take her temperature rectally (she is definitely NOT fond of that...who would be?!) I kept rocking her and it seemed like she would finally fall asleep, only to have a machine start beeping, or someone come in to look at her, etc. So annoying and stressful! At one point she had to have a screening done for RSV- this involved sliding a flexible-tipped syringe up inside her nose and withdrawing a sample of mucous...I don’t have to tell you how much she hated this. Poor muffin. Also, a respiratory therapist came and gave her an albuterol breathing treatment, which, while very traumatizing for Emmy, provided instant relief. She could breathe bigger breaths, her heart rate slowed down, and her O2 sats came up to the 90+ area. Big relief.


Once the RSV and influenza screens came back (both negative, hooray!) we were admitted to the pediatrics floor of the hospital.

(We had to wait for the screening to come back so they would know if we needed to be in Isolation or not-- it turns out that there Isolation sign was hung on her doorway anyway, even though both screen came back negative). She rode in my lap in a wheelchair up to the 8th floor. We got her settled into her room at about 5am and she was seen by a few more doctors and nurses. All during this time she was eating, drinking, making wet/dirty diapers, etc.


Around 10 I left to go let the dogs out and get that poor girl some toys-- all I had grabbed before we left was her “Silky”, a small satin/velour blanket thing that she sleeps with. When I got back to the hospital she had been lowered to 1/2 liter of O2 and had pulled her cannula over to really her cheek area, not anywhere near her nose. Then the docs decided that she could try no oxygen at all, and she kept her sats up around the 94-100 mark on room air which was so relieving.


She was served a tray of Inedible Delights for lunch so Paul’s mom Jane (Granny) went down to the cafeteria and got her a grilled cheese sandwich, which she picked at. She MUCH preferred the ice cream that was on her tray, but I only gave her a few little bites (maybe 2-3 tsp total) because it was only the second time in her life to have ice cream and I was afraid she would get sick from it.


She finally took a 1 hour nap (keep in mind, we had all been up since 2am!) but was back jumping up and down in the metal crib shortly after. The nurses kept coming in and saying, “What is she doing? It must be the albuterol-- it can make them hyper” but we just laughed and said that jumping in her crib is just what she does! Albuterol had nothing to do with it!


Around 3pm I had the nurses page the on call resident again- I really didn’t see any reason for her to stay in the hospital where she obviously couldn’t rest if she was having good saturations, her heart rate had slowed, and she was eating/drinking/making dirty diapers. Luckily for us, the resident completely agreed and discharged us. At 3 the respiratory therapist returned and gave her albuterol treatment #3 and we were home by 4pm. I figured she would go right to sleep in the car and I would put her to bed very early, but when we got home she was up and ready to play again! Can you believe that? So, we played with her and kept her up until 6pm, at which time she had a quick bath, cup, and bed. She jumped in her crib until about 6:15 (seriously....I wish we could bottle up her energy and sell it!) and then I didn’t hear another peep from her room until 6:30am the NEXT morning! I went to bed at 6:30 (also exhausted from a very long day!) and, aside from going in to check on her 4-5 times during the night, slept completely uninterrupted until she got up at 6:30 Sunday. Bliss!


Today (Monday) we took her to see her regular pediatrician for a follow up visit. She said Emily looks great but still is congested. She said not to use the albuterol “just because”-- to save it for when she really does need a treatment. We had brought it with us just in case she needed it but the doctor said she was OK. We are so glad to have her home and (sort of) healthy. I don’t want to go back to the ED for a long, long time!

Merry Christmas to All!

Tonight is Emily’s second Christmas Eve! Although we are lonely tonight (Paul is on call at the hospital all night) we still tried to keep up our traditions that Paul and I started last year. Some of them will have to be modified (like a portrait of Em with each parent on Christmas Eve) simply because we weren’t both present and it’s too hard to try to take photos of myself! For the most part though, we did the things I wanted to do to remember this night.


First, this afternoon my friend DeeDee and her little girl Brielle came over. DeeDee’s husband Kevin works at the same hospital as Paul and was on call tonight as well, so we girls got together and made cookies (meringue, oatmeal chocolate chip, and peanut butter no-bakes) to take to the hospital tonight for the Daddies and everyone else working in their departments. We met Kevin and Paul for dinner and then after we got back home we did the rest of our traditions:

1.Put out treats for Santa and the reindeer (this year he is having pretzel sticks, meringue cookies, and water)
2.Emily is dressed in her Christmas jammies and bunny slippers
3.Left the lights on on the tree (usually we turn them off at night)
4.Hung up the stockings by the fireplace
5.Read The Polar Express (although here’s a little confession....Emily was NOT feeling the story tonight so I admit...she did get the condensed version. It’s the thought that counts, right?!)
6.I tucked Emily in nice and tight and said her prayers for her, telling her the story of Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus.


It is lonely tonight without Paul. I know next year will be better, happier, because we will all be together. At least he is just 6 miles away at work-- I cannot imagine the aching hearts of families with loved ones overseas tonight. I am so grateful that her Daddy is just down the road, not halfway across the world.


Tonight I am thankful for so many things- for my beautiful baby, my loving, supportive husband, our families, the relative ease of moving to North Carolina, for my job, which I do actually love, even though it’s a Tough Love kind of feeling a lot of the time (just ASK how many times I’ve thought of my little friends and worried for them....and I still have another 10 days before I can check on them!) We have been so very lucky and blessed this year and for some reason tonight it all seems so obvious to me. I am thankful....so very, very thankful.


Tonight, we wish you all a very Merry Christmas. Thank you for being a part of our story and for checking on us.

14 Months Old!

Our wild girl is 14 months old today! Here’s what’s new in her life:

1.She is WALKING 90% of the time now (finally!) It didn’t really start until late this week but she is comfortable with walking and tries all the time. This has enabled LOTS of other things, such as removal of objects that don’t belong to her out of drawers, pulling things off beds, etc. For some reason the phrase be careful what you wish for is just echoing in my head!! No, seriously- I am THRILLED that she is finally walking and is so happy about it. She just starts tottering along and grins and laughs the whole way!
2.She LOVES Chatters Elmo. This little guy is $9.99 at Toys R Us and she loves him to pieces. Miss Jamey has one at her house and, although Emmy doesn’t know it yet, there is one waiting quietly in her stocking for Thursday morning. So far she is pretty UNimpressed with all the other Elmos out there...maybe she knows how much Mommy hates commercial-y toys?
3.She has completely stopped using the bottle. A few weeks ago (see my post Sick Day) she had a tummy virus which included a whole host of bodily functions we will not be discussing here. Anyway, I was giving her lots of Pedialyte to replace electrolytes and didn’t want to put it in her bottle in case the flow would be too fast and she might choke. So, we used her sippy cups. One night I tried giving her a sippy before bed and again in the middle of the night and when she took them both with no fuss....well, let’s just say Mommy packed those bottles up and we haven’t seen them since! I am so proud of her and how easily she transitioned to a big girl cup for all the time.
4.Speaking of cups, we’re about to get some new cups, too, from her Christmas stocking (it’s a big stocking!) Paul’s cousin Lorrie says cousin Jack loves his The First Years cup, and she does too...because it only has 2 parts- the cup and the lid. That’s right-- no valves, tubes, etc., but it’s still a spill-proof cup. We found some for Miss Emmy and she’ll get to try them out in a few days. I’m excited to see her reaction to a new kind of spout and also because the cups (to my disdain) feature Elmo and a few other Sesame Street characters on them. *Note to children’s manufacturers.....ever heard of PLAIN plastic, with no characters? All I want is plain old cups!* (stepping down off my soapbox) I wonder if Em will even notice Elmo on there?
5.Have I mentioned she is drinking from a straw now? Not on a regular basis, but she has figured it out and can do it when she feels like it. Pretty fun!


All right...that’s about all I can think of for now. Our girl is growing bigger, wilder, and more independent every day!

First Kids Meal!

It’s official- Emily had her first complete Kid’s Meal tonight. We met Paul by the hospital because he was on call and then went to Panera for dinner. Paul and I each had the Pick 2 (loooove the Pick 2s!!) and Emily had the grilled cheese and Horizon milk....which she drank partly out of the straw, having figured that out a few nights ago. Such a big girl! While she ate she was being SO ladylike (for once I’m not being one bit sarcastic here!) She ate only tiny bites, threw NO food on the floor (this is huge, people!) and even wiped her mouth with the napkin. I know, right- incredible! She EVEN tried to feed Mommy a little bite of grilled cheese off the table....now how sweet is that? (No, I didn’t eat it, but she didn’t know any different!) She is getting so very very grown up now, you know.

Sick Day

Poor Miss Emily has her first real illness- a vomiting/diarrhea bug! I actually had to take a sick day today to stay home with this little lady. She is very clingy and only wants me to hold (but only while I’m standing up...no sitting allowed!) She took a 2 hour nap this morning and is just waking up. Let’s hope she feels better soon! Poor muffin.

Pretty Impressive!

So the list of things Emily has learned to do just gets longer by the minute- I figured tonight I had better sit down and write them all out before I can’t remember all of them. She is really amazing us lately- she is like a little sponge, learning things so quickly!


Drumroll, please! :)

1.First, she has figured out how to do all the shapes on her shape sorter. Even the star. She doesn’t struggle at all with putting them all in the right holes!
2.She has learned to point to items or things that she wants.
3.At Miss Jamey’s the other day, when Jamey began reading a book about Elmo, Emily left the group and went over and PICKED UP an Elmo toy, bringing it back to the group. Brilliant!
4.She can stand completely unassisted and is taking an increasing number of steps every day. Walking is truly just around the corner. We have a little trepidation about this! :)
5.Lately, when she is having trouble figuring out how to do a toy (like the musical ones we have that require a firm touch to turn them on) she will reach over, grab mine (or Paul’s) hand, and make US do it for her. She knows that we will help her but what’s funny is that she completely guides our hands to do the work for her-- she knows how to do it, just doesn’t know exactly how to get her own hands to do it.
6.She was playing with a set of Geometric Solids (solid wooden blocks in geometric shapes used for classroom instruction....yes, she’s a Teacher’s Kid, what can we say?!) and kept putting the lid on the box, taking it off, putting it on, etc. Then she began getting all the shapes out of the box and putting them back in. Occasionally I would place a different type of toy in the bin and she would immediately stop and pull out the one that “didn’t belong.” Also, she took the initiative to stack up several of the blocks by herself!
7.Another great pastime right now is “helping” with the laundry....helping is a rather loose term but if you need a washer/dryer door closed, I’ve got your girl! She is also good at removing things from the basket in case you need assistance with that aspect. :)
8.On a cute note, she wore bunny slippers to bed last night and has also been wearing them around the house a lot. It is sooo precious! And, last night I put her bathrobe on and she loved it. Plus it looked adorable....you could almost see how happy she was to be wearing something like that (she had never had it on before).
9.She can eat a sandwich- we don’t let her, obviously, but if you give her a sandwich (or a French fry) she can bite off on little bite, chew it up, and then will (sort of) ask for more. So big!


OK, so that’s all I can think of. Amazing that all of this is happening a matter of weeks, right? I just cannot get over how quickly she is learning so much!