NOTE - Please read the previous 2 posts first!
What a crazy weekend we had! Poor Olivia really had a tough time this weekend – thankfully it is over and we are recovering now. So here’s the scoop . . .
I already told you that we went to the Marbles Kids Museum on Friday night – well, everything started going really wrong shortly after we got home. The event went until 9pm, so we got home around 10 and put Olivia to bed. We went to bed around midnight. Then around 1am I started to hear Olivia coughing . . . the croupy cough! A REALLY BAD croupy cough – she was struggling so hard to breathe, I could hear her from the other room wheezing! So, we got her out of bed and took her into the bathroom to sit with her with the steamy hot shower running. The steam usually helps to open the throat when a baby has croup. (Croup is a virus that affects the vocal cords and can make the throat swell shut.) Anyway, after 20 minutes in the steamy bathroom, it didn’t help her – so we called the doctor.
The doctor said that if the steam didn’t work, we should take her out into the cold night air for about 20 minutes. Keep in mind that it is now almost 2am and our thermometer says that it is only 27 degrees out!! So we bundle her up and head on out. We looked like complete crazy people walking our toddler around outside in the middle of the night while it is freezing out. I know the cars that drove by must have wondered about our sanity and our parenting! Needless to say, that didn’t work either!
So the next step, according to the doctor was to head out to the ER with her! Wonderful! It was now 2am on a Friday night and we were headed to the ER. This should be fun! Luckily one of our hospitals near us has a special children’s ER (Wake Med on New Bern Ave – for those who live around here). Thankfully, it is kept separate from all the crazy’s in the regular ER and when we got there we were (surprisingly) the only ones in the waiting room. It was SO much nicer than a regular ER to take a child – I highly recommend it!
So we got checked in and called to the triage room by about 2:45am. They assessed her and gave her an oral steroid, a breathing treatment (epinephrine) and some motrin for her fever. The oral steroid was supposed to take at least 8-12 hours to work, but the breathing treatment should work immediately. Well it seemed to work pretty quickly – although she hated every minute of getting it.
Then they wanted to get a chest x-ray to check her lungs. I’m not sure if any of you have ever seen a toddler get a chest x-ray, but it is pretty awful! They have this crazy contraption that she sits in and it closes in around her with her arms over her head (of course it has to be tight enough that she can’t move – so VERY uncomfortable). Pair this with her not feeling well and being tired and cranky as it is now about 3:30am and it is just bad! She screamed the whole time and I had to hold her arms up and try to comfort her while they took their pictures. Grant had to wait outside and he said they could hear her screaming down the hallway! L
Well, the x-rays showed that her lungs were clear, but confirmed the croup diagnosis – it showed a narrowing or “steepling” (like a church) of the throat – showing it closing up. Well, after a little bit, her wheezing came back and they had to do another breathing treatment. This was about 4:30am. They also told us that we would have to stay 6-8 hours after any treatments were done to make sure she didn’t rebound again. Well, after a little while her wheezing came and went a little bit, but not severe enough to warrant any further treatment. However, they still decided to admit her to the hospital. (It is now about 6:30am or so). Keep in mind that Grant had patients that Saturday morning at 8am and 9am, as well as a hair cut appt at 6:45 (yeah, I know – who gets their hair cut that early, right?). Well, he cancelled the hair appt. and wound up leaving around 7am to go to see his patients while I stayed with baby – I wasn’t going anywhere anyway! They didn’t get a bed for her until around 8:30am. Well, she was pretty pitiful until around lunchtime – then she started perking up a bit. I had managed to get her down for a short nap and she woke up when Grant showed back up with some lunch for us, in a much better mood. But, we still weren’t allowed to leave until about 5pm that night.
What a LONG day . . . and it wasn’t over yet!
Well, we got home and put Olivia down for a nap and we took the opportunity to get one, as well since we had not slept at all the night before. About an hour later (about 6:30pm) she woke up screaming – I ran into her room and she had gotten sick all over herself and the crib. It was a HUGE mess! So, we tag-teamed to get her into the bath and get the mess all cleaned up. So, I was stripping down her bed and Clorox-ing everything while Grant was bathing her. I started up the laundry with all the bedding to try to get it all washed and dried to put back together before she had to go to sleep that night. We brought her downstairs (and covered the couch and the floor with some towels as a preventative measure). The poor baby had gotten a stomach bug (we’re guessing from the museum Friday night) and she was just pitiful. She couldn’t even take one sip of anything without getting sick. What an awful feeling to not be able to *fix it* as a parent. And, of course, we couldn’t find our thermometer and our discharge sheet had said to call the doc if 1) she had vomiting and 2) if she had a temp of 100.4 or greater and 3) if she had any more breathing issues.
So I ran out to Target to get a new thermometer (and some purell and some more Clorox anywhere spray to sanitize our home and some Imodium, since we knew we would wind up with bug at some point!). Well, her temp was exactly 100.4! Uh-oh. Well, we decided to wait it out and see how she did before calling the doc, as we were in no rush to be sent back to the hospital. We gave her some Tylenol, which brought her fever down and helped her through the worst of it. Eventually we were able to lay her down for bed.
So . . . we had made it through the worst of the croup and now a stomach bug – what next? I mean things happen in 3’s right? Well, this was no exception! Come to find out – our washing machine broke! At the peak of trying to get all her bedding and clothes and towels cleaned from her getting sick! Yuck! Yup, we ticked off karma somehow.
Well, she was sick through Sunday night – mostly better by Monday, but still a bit of an upset stomach. Of course it hit me on Sunday night so I stayed home Monday. Then it hit Grant this morning – so he stayed home. What a weekend from you know where! I’m SO glad it’s over! (Well, not quite for Grant yet – he still feels pretty crappy, but by tomorrow, he should be fine!). Anyway, I hope you all had a MUCH better weekend than we did and hopefully I’ll have a better story to tell you all next time!
On a complete side note - Olivia had her 18-month doctor's appt. today. She is doing very well - here are her latest stats:
Height - 33 inches (75%)
Weight - 22.6 lbs (25%)
Head - 46 3/4 inches (50%)
So she is still our tall and skinny girl! Based on the doc's calculations - she should be approximately 5 foot 6 inches as an adult (though this is just speculation at this point). So she will be taller than EVERY woman in my family! Definitely from the Nelson side! (She'll also be about my brother's height! ha ha!)
Ok, so that is all for the moment - I'm exhausted from just retelling it all - never mind going through it at the time!
Susan and Nana were surprised with some pictures of Olivia and Drew together (that we took over Thanksgiving) 
They got Olivia a Disney princess keyboard - that she LOVES:
Then we went back to Susan and Alan's house for the evening. Here's Olivia checking out their tree in her cute little dress from Grandma Noreen.
We had a wonderful time seeing everyone on the Nelson/Coffey side of the family and the kids (and us) got pretty spoiled by the end of it. Thanks for everything, guys! We had a great time.
We had a nice Christmas *lunch* . . .
Even Olivia at quite a bit!
Here is Granddad with Olivia and cousin Drew:
