Sick Baby

Ellie was excessively fussy on Thursday, and has been fighting an awful diaper rash, so I thought that was why. She is SUCH a calm, happy baby that I should have listened to my gut. I KNEW something else was wrong. At bedtime she refused to be put down, which was also really out of the ordinary for her, but I just tried to lay down to feed her and we slept on and off. At 3am, she was still refusing to nurse and I thought she felt warm, so I got up to get a warm washcloth to wipe her bottom and I got the thermometer. When it read 101.3, I panicked. I know that 100.4 is considered a fever for a baby her age, and I knew that it meant we were going to the ER.

I called the pediatrician on call and she confirmed what I knew. She also said to prepare to be admitted to the hospital and that Eliza would likely get a spinal tap. We waited for my mom to come over because Carter was obviously sleeping, and we left. Got to the ER and they put an IV in and did a catheter for a urine sample. They also swabbed her nose for RSV and flu.

Then they did a spinal tap. They told us we could stay but that it was an uncomfortable position for babies and it was really best for us to leave. So I had to hand her over to the nurse and I started crying. It was the worst moment ever. We walked to the waiting room and I could hear her crying. :( Luckily it only took 10 minutes or so and we then were just waiting on a room in the peds unit.

The doctors all came in and said basically this - in a baby under 8 weeks, any fever is an emergency. They do all the tests to rule out major things, and they don't wait for the results before they start antibiotics. That is why we have to be admitted and stay here for 2-3 days. She'll be on antibiotics every 6hrs as we wait for all the blood work, urinalysis, etc to come back.

The good news is that so far, everything seems normal. The pediatrician came in and he thinks that it's probably some viral infection that he can't identify yet. So as long as she doesn't continue to run fever, we can maybe go home on Sunday (When all the official lab results come back). They'll continue antibiotics until then.

She was so sad and pitiful, but as soon as she got some Tylenol, she started doing much better.

It was really scary, but now, I'm feeling fine and just trying to keep her as comfy as possible with a big IV etc in her arm. She's fussy, but not too bad.

Hopefully today will be a better day and we can go home tomorrow.

This broke my heart:


but here she is after the Tylenol :)