Well it’s not like this was a total shock, since Natalie had been showing pretty clear signs of being sick this weekend. She threw up (or refluxed - the line between the two is blurry) all but one of her feeds on Sunday and had a horrible night. Since Matt is gone, mom offered to help if I needed it. I think I finally tapped out at 3AM and she took over.
I called the pediatrician Monday morning and we got an appointment to get her checked out. Since we got the Owlet (fancy bluetooth baby O2/heart rate monitor) for her a few weeks ago, I even printed out the last few nights of her O2 stats to show how she is struggling to keep her numbers up. We have a normal O2 monitor she uses as well, but we added the Owlet for our piece of mind and because it tracks her data every night and we can see it historical trends. The other one is really only good for real time information. Either way, they were both going off a lot last night.
I probably looked like a crazy mom, but at least our pediatrician is well aware of her issues and appreciates the fact that I am a scientist at heart and having data makes me happy. He chuckled when I pulled the graphs out, but only because it was so fitting for me. He did appreciate the extra info as well. He sent her down to x-ray to decide for sure the best course of action.
Which, of course, was getting admitted back to the hospital. Sigh… I wasn’t thrilled about it, but as awful as last night was - at least we have some backup in keeping an eye on her. And hey - she got her old room back, so at least that is familiar.
(This was the photo I sent Matt to tell him we got admitted. I think my feelings were fairly clear!)
They did the usual slew of tests when they admitted her and this time she tested positive for Parainfluenza 3, which is the #2 cause of serious respiratory illnesses in young children. RSV is #1 and thankfully she got vaccinated for that one!
Thankfully she’s not sick enough that she needed the high pressure air this time, just low flow oxygen and some breathing treatments. And she seemed unfazed by the Albuterol as long as she had her binkie!
Aunt Heather even came to the rescue and picked the boys up for me. She made an exciting night of pizza making and hanging out so they didn’t even seem to mind that I was missing.
And my amazing mom even offered to spend the night at the hospital so I could sleep. There’s a lot to be said about having family around!
Look at her not even caring about her vitals check. It’s all old news to this girl. And she improved enough overnight to not need the extra oxygen!
Some improvement, but was definitely not feeling great. On the bright side, it meant I got extra snuggles!
I brought the boys by to see their sister and check out her room. Neither one of them were sick, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to bring them by. It certainly made their day! Thomas even made sure that her board was updated with her name. :)
Of course, it was Tuesday and you all know what that means… Taco Tuesday! I was trying to keep things as normal as possible and that means Taco Tuesday must be celebrated! And yes, I know those are quesadillas, but our interpretation is pretty liberal when it comes to Taco Tuesday. Pretty much anything that is remotely Tex-Mex counts. And these guys looooove the quesadillas at Taco King!
Well I spoke too soon on her not needing oxygen. This is about what happened last time. She would do great during the day and then overnight, she would need some extra oxygen support.
Also I think she looks very skeptical here. Like how on Earth could her mother make her do tummy time while she is clearly ill enough to be in the hospital?? Her therapists were pretty proud of her not slacking off though!
As I previously mentioned, I am officially back at work, which makes her being in the hospital much more challenging. Our IT department hooked me up with a laptop to work remotely, but there was a pretty important meeting this week that I didn’t want to miss. Thankfully, Mom was happy to hang out with her while I was at work.
Understandably, my stress levels are a little high this week and I was totally planning on grabbing an ice cream out of the vending machine to treat myself. Luckily for me, there was some event downstairs as I was leaving and they were handing out ice cream! Score!
They decided to try some breathing medicine that was delivered via inhaler. I was super curious how they get a tiny baby to use an inhaler and I was not disappointed with the clever-ness of this device. She was less impressed with it, but it works whether they are calmly breathing or throwing a fit!
She’s gotten much more into her toys since the last hospital visit so we made sure to have a selection to play with. I think mom was the smart one who hung them off the IV pole, but it was a perfect spot for her to look at them when she was chilling in bed.
More tummy time! She didn’t seem to mind it quite as much when she had such a cute baby to look at. Though the really impressive part was her timing on blowing this giant snot bubble as soon as I was snapping her picture. Gross!
The boys came back for another visit and discovered the giant white board behind her door. Thomas decided to draw her a family portrait. I’m not sure why Henry doesn’t have any hair, but I loved it. Unfortunately he is his own worst critic and wanted to erase it right away. Thankfully he let me take a photo of it.
But that wasn’t the only excitement! We stopped and got her balloons to brighten up her room. She loved them so much! We managed to tie them off so they were at her eye level and she stared at them and whacked at them when you put them in arm’s reach. She was obviously starting to feel better and actually got to come home the next day!
Only 5 days for this bout - our visits are getting shorter! I’ll take that for a silver lining. :)