No Myrtle pictures again this week - but there's a good reason why. As the Salvateenies turned 34 weeks old on Wednesday, Joe called me at work to say he was worried because Daniel felt really hot. He was making sure to keep him hydrated and monitoring the situation, but wanted me to be aware for when I got home. The babies' uncle came over between Joe leaving for work and me getting home, and when he got them up from their nap, he called, concerned that Max was warm. "Are you sure it's not Daniel?" Nope, he double checked and Daniel felt fine, it was Max who was warm.
By the time I got home, Max still felt a little warm, but he was also hungry, so we brought out that day's experiment - yogurt and blackberry puree. Super yummy and a truly gorgeous color. But not something we'll do again! We were lucky to escape without blackberry all over the carpet and everything else. Luckily, we were able to contain it to just their faces and bibs:
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| Daniel likes it so much he's trying to lick it off his chin (and, yes, his tongue does look a little bit like it wants to split in the middle....and, yes, I am a little creeped out by that) |
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| But he's not, he just thinks it's yummy |
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| I should've known from this picture that Max wasn't feeling well - how could you not smile when you were covered in that much blackberry goodness? |
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| Caroline was definitely enjoying herself! |
After a successful clean up from their dinner, my brother went out to fetch some food for us. I checked Max's forehead and he was burning up, so I tucked an instant read thermometer under his armpit. It was pretty high, so I dug out the fancy temporal scanner thermometer my mom got us way back when the concern was keeping their body temp UP. It took a while to get the hang of it, but the read out kept showing temperatures between 102 and 103.
So I called the advice nurse. I love the advice nurse. And I love that when your issue is a sick baby, you get bumped a little bit to the top of the waiting list if there's a line. I was told to try to make sure Max stayed hydrated, keep him in cool, loose-fitting clothes, and monitor his temperature and any other symptoms. Then they set up a phone appointment for 2pm on Thursday to check in on him. At 9, he at about 7 oz of his 9oz bottle, but it was a battle to get him through it. He fell asleep and I put him in his crib, but he woke up a little later and really would not rest unless I had him sitting straight up on my lap. Which meant no sleep for Mommy.
I called the advice nurse again, and she ran through the same basic monitoring steps. No sooner had I hung up the phone than he threw up all over me. LUCKILY , he was facing me and all the yogurt, formula, and blackberry seeds ended up on my shirt and his swaddle and not all over the couch! Almost as soon as I'd peeled the swaddle off him and the shirt off of me, he started to throw up again. I aimed him at the plastic mat on the floor, since that's easy to clean and disinfect. And another call to the advice nurse. She said the priority now, with the fever and vomit, was to keep him hydrated. I tried a bottle with Pedialyte, but he refused it.
Having gotten about 25 minutes of sleep, I decided it was not feasible for me to go into school on Thursday, so I tried to remember all the page numbers for my classes' assignments and cobbled together a lesson plan and arranged for a sub. Then I called back to the advice nurse, who decided we should exchange our afternoon phone appointment for a morning clinic visit. The upside was that Max would get to visit the same pretty doctor he'd flirted with when he made a visit to the clinic in April. I almost suspected he'd cooked the whole thing up just to see her again!
At the clinic, Max was looking pretty pathetic. His lips and boy parts were all dried out, showing he was dehydrated. He'd refused his bottle again that morning. The doctor checked him all over and his temp was high (103.6), but his breathing was OK and his ears were a little red, but that goes along with all the screaming (she'd had to dig a ton of wax out of his ears to even check them, anyway). We waited around for a while to get a urine sample to make sure he didn't have a UTI - by the way, in case you were wondering, you can't ask an 8-month old to pee in a cup, so they tape a little plastic bag over his penis and it collects whatever comes out - after force-feeding him some formula, he finally peed enough that we could run the test, and it was clean, so we stopped by the pharmacy for some baby Ibuprofen and a medicine-dropper and headed home.
Max was still refusing his bottle, and when I used the dropper to give him anything (formula or Pedialyte), he just spit it back out. His temperature was climbing, and now he was coughing. Back to the trusty advice nurse, who consulted with the on-call doctor and said to bring him into the ER right away.
Those are not words you want to hear - bring your baby into the ER. But I did. Joe stayed home with Caroline and Daniel, which might've been harder than being the one to go to the hospital. The staff at the ER was amazingly gentle with me and we hardly had to wait at all. The triage nurse started by telling me that Max looked really good and that I probably had nothing to worry about, but since he wasn't drinking it was a good thing I'd brought him in. He gave him some tylenol for the fever (back down to 103.7 at this point) and made a note for us to be seen in a room in case we had to stay for any amount of time. A few minutes later we were taken back and seen by another nurse who chatted with Max about his own three children - all boys - and complimented him on being so brave. When the doctor came in he checked his ears and throat and listened to his chest and declared it was croup. Since he hadn't been coughing in the morning, the doctor at the clinic had not caught it. He was given a shot and a prescription for tylenol suppositories and we got to stay in the room for almost half an hour before and after the shot, which gave us both some time to rest.
What I was most impressed with was the follow-up. The next morning, we got a call from the hospital to make sure he was doing OK, then a call from our pediatrician's office, then another call from the clinic to schedule a follow-up appointment. It seems the consensus is that Daniel probably had the same infection on Wednesday and was just better prepared to fight it off for whatever reason. And there's no way the two of them could've had it and Caroline wasn't exposed, so we're keeping our fingers crossed she makes it through the weekend without getting sick.
Since then, we've been splitting baby duties - I take Max patrol, and whoever else is here (Joe on Thursday and Friday, my brother today and tomorrow) gets to deal with the "healthy" kids. And when I'm alone, I make sure to wash and disinfect my hands and arms and change my shirt before going from Max to one of the other babies. I think I went through 5 shirts on Friday! And today I had to wash my face because Max decided to turn from my shoulder and lick me. Nice kid, right?
But he is feeling better. His fever broke Thursday night and hasn't come back. He's lost his voice from the coughing, yelling, and crying, and he's still hacking and sleeping more and eating less than normal, but there are little moments of Max-ish-ness that let us know he's on the mend. Like Friday night, as he slept in my arms, and had a dream sweet enough that it made him smile:
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| Asleep |
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| Sweet Dreams! |
Now if I can avoid getting sick, it will all have a happy ending!
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