Catching Up

Now that we are out of the hospital and on the mend...it's time to play catch up! Things that happened during the crazy month of January:

Kendyl turned a month old!
Kendyl is such a delight to be around. We are enjoying her so much more on the outside of my womb than on the inside. Her sweet personality is making up for those long difficult months in the pregnancy. She is a very easy going and predictable baby. When she starts fussing, it never takes long to make her happy again. She is our little smiler. She's been smiling from the time she was a week old. Our other kids would smile in their sleep at an early age, but they never smiled as a response to something we were doing until they were about 6 weeks old. From the time Kendyl was about 3 weeks old, whenever I speak to her in a soft high pitch voice, her eyes get real big and then she breaks out in a smile. There was one time when in the hospital (at 3 weeks old) she had been crying for a 1/2 an hour while they were trying to insert an IV, once they were finished I came back into the room and started talking to her and she just looked at me and smiled. It broke my heart to think how forgiving she was! She loves to lay on her stomach. All I had to do to get her to smile for this picture was lay her on her tummy and she smiled for about a minute. She is a strong eater and is growing like a weed. At 3 weeks, while in the hospital, she weighed 8lbs 9 oz and did not gain any weight and that concerned the doctor. At her 4 week checkup she had gained a whole pound...9lbs 9oz...he was very impressed. We are happy that she's healthy and happy and that she's ours to enjoy.

And not to brag, but we've noticed some unique talents emerging from this child. As seen in this picture...our child has mastered how to blow bubbles out of her nose. That's not an easy trick!



UTAH HERE WE COME


For those who haven't heard...Richard accepted an internship working for a vet next year in Salt Lake City. We are very excited to be returning to Utah, we have really missed living there and we are happy we will be living so close to my family. Our expected move date will be late May or early June.

Sadie's first (and hopefully last) ride in an ambulance

(Sadie's funky bed head hair)



Ho Ho Ho...Merry Christmas...Santa brought our family a bag full of GERMS this year!

Each week for the past month a new germ has been introduced to our family.

So the lastest germ exposure put Sadie into the hospital, but not before getting a ride in an ambulance.

On Thursday I took Kendyl to the doctor and Sadie and Mason came along with me...HUGE MISTAKE! Of course they wanted to play with all the germ infested toys in the lobby, and I was dumb to think that using hand gel every five minutes would fend off the germs. Then this little girl came in with her jammies and started playing with my kids. She said "I'm running a high fever. Why are you here?" I tried getting my kids away from her, but every time I called them over she would follow them. So it was no surprize when Sadie started running a fever early Friday morning. (It seems to be my kids only get sick on the weekends). So we kept in contact with her doctor over the weekend and made an appointment with him on Monday. But each day she became a little more sick and lethargic. All day Sunday we barely saw her eyes open and she did not eat ANYTHING for three days. She did, however, keep drinking which gave us a little peace of mind. Come Monday, once again, all she did was sleep and moan with each breath she took. She was still running a high fever and that's when I noticed she was struggling to breath and a bad cough was coming on. I called the doctor to see if I should take her to the ER and he said yes. I struggled to even get her awake when leaving, but managed to get more Tylenol in her system. And isn't this how it always works...once I got to the ER she had snapped out of her lethargic state and was no longer running a fever. I felt like I had to convince them it was more serious than a viral bug. Thanks to routine tests, her chest x-rays proved it was more serious. They discovered she had a bad case of pneumonia. Ironically, even though the x-rays showed it was well developed pneumonia, her oxygen levels were still good.

Sadie had asked on the way to the hospital if they were going to poke her. I told her I wasn't sure. After the intial check-up when they just thought it was a viral bug, they told me she wouldn't need any blood work, so I thought it was safe to tell her she wasn't going to be poked. But after the x-ray came back they had to insert an IV. WOW... Sadie's got a good set of lungs on her. She screamed so loud that other employees came running to see who was being murdered. PARENTAL MENTAL NOTE: Never make promises when you are unsure what's going on. Even though I gave her advance warning, she still told me what a LIAR I was because they did end up poking her ... and they poked her good.

We stayed in the ER for about 4 hours while they began treatments, then they transported her by ambulance to a different hospital who had a good pediatric ward. After her painful poke with the IV, Sadie learned she couldn't trust ANYONE in that hospital. She about lost it when two firemen came in to load her up in the ambulance. I tried to lighten the situation by making it sound like riding in an ambulance was SO COOL...I think her little mind was more worried about what was to come after the ride. She did not cry during the ride, but her little lip was quivering the whole time.

She spent the last two nights in the hospital and we were very happy when she was discharged today. It's been crazy switching hospital duties between Rich, his mom, and I, because Rich has a crazy work schedule and I have a baby who eats every 2 1/2 hours (and I will not allow my baby to step into this germ infested hospital). We've kind of worked out a system where Rich's mom brings the baby to me, I nurse her in the car, and Rich spends nights here so I can feed Kendyl throughout the night.

Sadie's doing MUCH, MUCH better. She's more alert and her personality is starting to resurface. Because of the meds they are pumping into her system, it makes her urine smell unpleasant. The first time I helped her to the bathroom she said "Mom, that smells so NASTY!" I chuckled, because what 4 year old uses the term "Nasty". Then she said, "No really Mom, I mean it...it really does smell SO NASTY".

The CRAZY and IRONIC thing is....last night I saw the mother of the sick girl from the doctors office HERE IN THE PEDIATRIC WARD! So my guess is her daughter also ended up here...but not before generously sharing her germs!!!

WE ARE NO STRANGERS TO THIS PEDIATRIC WARD...In fact there's been talk of permanently assigning us a room and carving our name into the door...nah just kidding! BUT THIS IS OUR 2ND TIME IN TWO WEEKS THAT WE'VE HAD A CHILD HERE!!!

KENDYL'S HOSPITAL STORY:

(After being on antibiotics for a few days, Kendyl had the worst diaper rash. It was so sad, but it was so cute airing out her nakey tush)

Kendyl's doing just fine now and we are truly happy about that. It was a little bit of a scare, mostly because of her young age. So starting Friday night (Dec. 3) she was not herself, wouldn't sleep was cranky etc. Then on Sat. night she wouldn't go to sleep at all. After spending 5 or so hours up with her I finally realized she was running a fever. I called the doctor at 5 a.m. and he told me to take her to the ER. At the ER they admitted her right away because it's scary for baby's that young to be running a temp, their little bodies can't handle it. They spent most of Sunday morning running tests on her. I wish I could say that I was the strong mother that stayed next to her side through the whole thing, instead I couldn't handle watching any of it so I paced the halls crying harder than Kendyl was. I took Kendyl into the ER by myself because Rich was too busy sick with the stomach flu...how selfish of him...haha! But he came to my rescue before they started taking the tests so Kendyl at least had daddy by her side. They ran every test possible. Blood tests, urine tests, spinal taps (which they were never successful at...after two tries and 30 min. of holding her in a little ball and poking her, they finally gave her a break). So they started running antibiotics through her IV and her fever came down. Then 24 hours later her blood work came back and they diagnosed her with Sepsis, which is bacteria in her blood. The poor girl had a bad case of the runs and was left with the worse case of diaper rash....so yet another concern. They spent another 24 hours culturing the blood work to find out exactly what bacteria it was. It turns out some of the bacteria they found is common to be found on skin....so then they were not sure if the blood results were accurate because they may have just not cleaned the skin well enough before the blood draw. But by that point she had been on antibiotics for 2 1/2 days and she was no longer running a fever so they felt like they did not need to spend another three days waiting on new blood work. So to make a long story short..haha...she's fine now. We are not sure what she had but all that matters is that she seems to be feeling much better. I'm just happy she's no longer hooked up to an IV (which they put in the top of her head....ouch!) and that they are finished poking her. SO WARNING TO ALL YOU MOTHER'S OF LITTLE ONES...I spent the first day crying my eyes out because I felt like I somehow could of prevented this...that I had let my guard down. The truth is it may have happened no matter what I did...but if I could rewind 3 weeks back I would be more picky about who holds her, asking everyone to wash hands, and I would not have taken her out in public yet.

Thank goodness we live in the time we live in and that it's not hard to find great medical care. We are so grateful that both of our little girls are doing much better.