Holidays in the Hospital

Well, as promised, here is the information about our recent hospital stay. I must say, I've been dreading the first sickness for Emilyn...stressing about what I'd do, what she'd get, how we'd know she was sick, etc, etc. For this being a pretty intense scenario, I feel pretty good about how I handled my emotions, which tend to be panicky, and how JD and I both responded, held up and managed our first crazy experience with sickness. (Warning, this blog is a little long, and there's lots of pics and video's so make sure you scroll all the way to the bottom!)

Christmas was a great day, but throughout the day I noticed Emilyn hadn't eaten as well as usual, her diapers were a bit runny and when we got home from celebrating, I noticed she seemed a bit warm. After taking her temperature (100.5) and calling the pediatrician, we were told that we needed to head in to the ER because anything over 100.4 could be serious with an infant Emi's age. (7 weeks) We rushed out the door, to the closest hospital that our insurance covers, and were immediately checked in to a room. The Dr. and nurses took her temp and it had climbed to 102, so they told us they'd have to do a complete check of her little body. Infants are still formulating their guts and immune systems, so a cold could appear to be something worse, and a serious illness could appear to be something less. This complete check-up included an IV (had to go in her head because they didn't have any small enough for her little arms), a blood draw, a catheter for a urine sample and a spinal tap! When I found all this out I, of course, started crying and was so sad that my little nugget would have to be put through all that trauma. Not to mention, they had to try to insert her IV three different times and her catheter about 10 times because she's so small, and the team was not specialized for children. ugh.... We did have a fantastic ER doc though, with wonderful bedside manner. (A rarity for ER docs, it seems.) ANYWAY, turned out that bacteria showed up in her urine and we had to transfer over to the children's hospital...which meant an ambulance ride for Emi and me.

We arrived at Emmanuel Children's Hospital and were ushered straight up to a room. By this time, it was about 6am and Emilyn was pretty pissed about being poked and stuck since 12am. She was exhausted, cranky and running a fever. Poor baby girl! The Dr's all examined her again and started giving her Tylenol and antibiotics, and then we were finally able to sleep for a few hours. (I think I got 3 hours of sleep within that 36ish hours.) I was running on so much adrenaline and anticipation about what was happening that I absolutely couldn't de-focus enough for sleep. (De-focus...not a word)

Monday, the 26th, we found out that we'd be in the hospital most of the week because of the bacteria found in Emi's urine, and the possible bacteria in her blood. Because of this, and the medicine, we basically spent the last four days zoned out in the hospital, watching TV, reading, hanging out on our computers and taking care of our sick baby...who slept and cried a lot. Emmanuel is a fabulous hospital and provided great staff, including an amazing Dr who specializes in infectious diseases (great for us!), women who came by to offer music therapy for Emi, movie night with popcorn and candy, and much more. We really appreciate the care we received.

After a couple days of meds, lots of sleep and lots of love, Emilyn started getting back to her old self. I started pumping because she seemed to eat better from a bottle while she was feeling yucky, and JD was able to feed her for the first time! We even managed to get a few smiles out of her! Our little chubby-face was obviously feeling much better, which helped us feel much better!

After waiting and waiting for the cultures to come back from her urine and blood, it turned out that she only had ecoli in her urine, which had come from her own little body. She didn't contract the illness from any outside source, and because we caught the infection so early, she hardly had any complications. Her little left kidney was swollen, but that is to be expected. She also didn't have any bacteria in her blood which was a huge relief!

Because Emilyn had to have 72 hours of IV antibiotics, we had to stay in the hospital until this afternoon. Now, in order to keep her infection away, she'll be on oral antibiotics for the next 11 days. We are so glad that we caught this sickness early, and that we have such an amazing hospital close by. As I type this, we are home on our couch drinking a glass of wine while Emilyn sleeps in her swing. (She sure missed that thing!) We are so glad to be home, and I can positively say that we will NEVER forget her first Christmas. It was an eventful one for sure!

Below are some other cute shots we got of Emilyn while we were there! Directly below is a shot of her zoned out...she stayed like that for about five minutes.
Here's Emi giving a little smile, even after they had to give her a new IV.


This is Emi using her super strong, skinny (but finally getting a little chub) legs to stand up straight!