Poor Sick Baby

Monday March 3
Emerson had been to the doctor the past 2 days for a bad cold but I had been told both times that she was fine despite my fear that she wasn't completely fine. We were still taking turns sitting up with her most of the night because she would gag and cough and I was terrified that if she was laying flat she would choke. Robb had to be out of town on Monday and Abby and I had a busy day with preschool and the going to the book parade. Emerson was very sleepy all day and spent a lot of the day sleeping in her carseat while we ran place to place. After the boys got home from school she started to get fussy and had spit up 2 feedings in a row (which is not like her at all). I had her in the baby carrier and wore her around all evening and when I took her out she was all hot and sweaty. I was hoping it was from being in the carrier but when I took her temperature she had a fever. Poor girl! Now I knew something was really wrong. I called Miranda the girl that watches Abby on Fridays and got her to come over and watch the kids since Robb was out of town. I called Robb and he started home from Holdredge and Emerson and I headed to the Emergency Room. On the way there I had to make the worried, crying call to Tasha for some reassurance that everything would be okay with Emmy. I knew that she would have to have the full work up since she was under 2 months, and that terrified me! Tasha being the best friend a girl could ask for, met me in the ER so I wouldn't have to be there by myself while they poked and prodded Emmy.
As I suspected they wanted to do the entire sepsis work up on her. She had to have blood drawn for blood cultures and lab work, they did a catheter to get a urine sample for a culture and she had a nasal swab for influenza and RSV. When the lab work came back they strongly suspected an infection and the decision was made at that point to do a spinal tap to rule out meningitis. Luckily Robb got there before the spinal tap. It was really hard to hold her down while the doctor did that. She was so sad and exhausted from all the pokes by that time that I just felt horrible for her. It was a long 1 1/2 wait for results to find out if they thought she had meningitis or not. After many prayers from a lot of people, the results came back negative on the spinal tap. The RSV test did come back positive though. Robb and I both felt horrible that we had managed to get her sick at only 3 weeks.
The decision was made to admit her to pediatrics since she was so little and was having some respiratory distress.

So started a really long week for everyone.......

Book Parade

This week is Dr Seuss's Birthday, which I guess is a big deal in the grade schools. Today the kids were suppose to dress like their favorite book character. I tried to get the boys to dress up like various characters from books they liked but both boys thought they were too cool for most of my ideas. Instead they wanted to wear a football jersey and a basketball jersey so they took sports books. They did look cute. Abby also wanted to dress up so she wore her Anna dress from the movie Frozen. This was the first outing that I had to take Emmy to so I was a little nervous and to make things worse she wasn't feeling well but I decided to suck it up and give it a shot. Robb had to be out of town so it was do it myself or have to miss it, which would have made the kids sad.

Getting Worse

Caleb continued to feel a little down and out for the next 12 hours and then he started to act like the Caleb we know and love. Bryce never really did feel all that sick despite the fact that he had strep so after 24 hours of antibiotics he also was feeling good. The one that wasn't feeling good was poor Emerson. She got stuffier by the hour. Robb and I had to take turns Saturday night sitting in the chair with her so that she could breath better. I was sucking out tons of snot every hour and she was starting to work harder to breath while she was eating. The mom in me was very worried about her and the nurse in me was very nervous because I just had this bad feeling that this was going to get worse before it go better. I again called the pediatricians office on Sunday and by saying you had a 3 week old that was having trouble breathing, we got right in for an appointment. Robb and the kids had went to the Titanaboa exhibit so Emmy and I went to the appointment alone. I packed a small bag for her because I thought for sure we were going to be admitted to the hospital.
We saw Dallas the PA and he didn't seem nearly as concerned as I was. He looked at her ears, throat, and listened to her lungs. He said that her ears were clear and that her lungs sounded good, she just had upper airway congestion. He also swabbed her for strep just to rule it out. Luckily that was negative. When I asked him about RSV he told me to be a mom and not a nurse and he was comfortable sending her home and she just had a cold. I was a little perturbed about this because despite the fact that she was having trouble breathing at night to the point of us staying up all night watching her I was suppose to just stop worrying.

Getting Sick

Tis the season of snotty noses and stuffiness at our house. Caleb and Bryce have had colds for what feels like forever. Poor kids, it sounds like they are just full snot and of course they never want to blow their noses to get it all out. We have been attempting to keep them out of Emerson's face but that doesn't really work out so well. On Saturday morning March 1st at about 4am Caleb came in our room sobbing that his ear hurt really bad. I gave him Motrin and sent him back to bed. In the morning he seemed okay and didn't really say much about his ear until around noon and then the poor guy felt horrible. We had planned on going to the Titanaboa exhibit at Morrill Hall and he was willing to miss it he felt so crummy. Luckily our pediatrician's office is open on Saturday and I called to make an appointment. Becky the PA (love her!) called us back and when I told her what was going on she said to just bring in whoever was sick and she would look at them. So the entire family went to the pediatricians office. I wanted her to look at Caleb and Bryce and Emerson was also pretty stuffy so I wanted reassurance that the poor baby would be okay too.
By the time we got to the doctor Caleb's ear drum had ruptured and he had blood and pus leaking out of his ear. I felt horrible for him, but he had given me less than 8 hours notice to get him to the Doctor from the time he complained of his ear hurting to it rupturing. I'm sure Becky the PA thought we were one Giant disaster when she walked in the room. Caleb ended up having a ruptured ear drum from a bad ear infection and also a sinus infection so he got Amoxicillin. Then she looked at Bryce. She asked him if his throat hurt and he said "No". So she let me look at his throat. It looked terrible! It was red and raw and his tonsils were huge. So he got swabbed for strep and sure enough he was positive. Again I felt like a horrible mom, but who has strep and doesn't have a sore throat? Then she looked at Emmy just for my piece of mind. She reassured me that she was just a little stuffed up and that she had probably caught a cold from the boys. She told us to use the nose sucker and saline and to run a humidifier in her room. Poor baby, she was sick at 3 weeks old.
Abby was the only kid that wasn't sick and I attribute this to her extreme overuse of hand sanitizer. I guess this OCD habit of hers served her well this time. Instead of going to Titanaboa we went home to have a movie night and try to get people better.

Way To Go Rockets

Bryce and Caleb had their final basketball game a couple weeks ago. They had a blast playing basketball and they both seemed to improve with each game. They really enjoyed having Robb coach. He did a great job with the team. I can't wait to see them play and improve every year.

First Outing

The first outing for all of our kids has always been going to see Grandma Hansen. Emerson was 11 days old and we decided that it was about time that Grandma met this little girl. I have forgotten how much stuff you have to take for a baby! We did manage to get there and remember everything that we had to have anyway.

 

 

Grammy was one of the first ones other than us that got to feed her a bottle. She was pretty excited  about that. We let her be a baby hog for the 3 hours we were there. It was fun to see how excited she was to meet Emerson.

As always she had made us a wonderful meal and she let the kids eat a ton of cookies and lemonade. It's not a visit to Grandma's if you don't leave with a stomachache from eating so many cookies.

Newborn pictures

I have stressed about newborn pictures for most of my pregnancy. With Abby we ended up with a cute picture of all the kids but it was a terrible experience. So I picked a photographer after talking to a lot of people and doing some online price comparing. I had my deposit in so I was guaranteed pictures within the first 7-10 days of life. Whitney the photographer was great. She said that for newborn pictures that she preferred to come to our house which worked out perfect since it takes hours to get out of the house. Whitney was really patient and I think we got some good pictures.
Here they are.... I wasn't super thrilled with the one of all the kids. Poor Caleb had a cold and he looks like he doesn't feel well.
I love this first one of Emerson. She looks SO New! This is exactly the kind of picture that I wanted.

Tooth Fairy Fail

I will admit that since we have brought Emerson home, Robb and I are just trying to survive the days most  of the time. We are both SO tired! On Saturday, Caleb had me pull his other front tooth right away in the morning. It had been hanging on by a thread for a while and I think he was ready to be able to eat normal again. It popped right out and he looked so cute as a little toothless boy. The day was busy as usual with trying to keep up with feeding Emmy and entertaining the kids. When he went to bed he didn't say anything about the tooth. Until morning.....
I woke up to Caleb standing by my side of the bed sobbing. He was holding his tooth fairy pillow that still had a tooth in it. To make things worse, Caleb is really into money right now and he was sure that a front tooth was a high dollar tooth. I felt HORRIBLE! This was one of the moments that in my crazy hormone state I was sure that I couldn't be a good mom to 4 kids. He went back in his room and was crying in his bed. I had to think quick and make this better. I sent Robb downstairs to leave a note and to leave money while I went to talk to Caleb. I explained to him that we were up all night with Emmy and the tooth fairy was probably worried we would see her so she couldn't come. In the mean time Robb was frantically trying to write a fairy letter and round up $2.00. In the end it was a near miss but Caleb was happy to find a tooth fairy note detailing her reasoning for not coming upstairs and instructions to leave the tooth on the table downstairs and he got his money. Whew that was close!!!