Roseola

Well we finally know what was causing the fevers. Roseola. It was my thought since she had a high fever an no other symptoms. Well this morning she woke up covered in the tell tale rash. I have never been so thankful to see a rash in my life. Little E is still not back to her super happy self but she is certainly on the mend. I stayed home with her today and she took a super long morning and afternoon nap. Pretty much she slept all morning, ate lunch and went back down for a nap. She was up for a total of an hour between the naps. She slept horribly on Sat, Sun and Mon night so I have a feeling she is playing a bit of catch up. Shazam is home with her tomorrow so Thursday we should be ready to go to daycare. Fingers crossed. While she is feeling better she looks a little rough around the edges right now with a rash all over her face, chest and back. I am so glad that we had to reschedule our family photo shoot to next week. Splotchy rash is not what we are looking for on the holiday card.

On a final note we have a new badge on the left. On November 17th we will be blogging for Preemies. I want to encourage all our readers to take the time to blog for babies on November 17th as well. Whether you have a preemie or not on November 17th take the time to remember the thousands of babies born too soon every year.

Sick

Little E woke up Friday morning with a 102 temperature. I had already gone to work and Shazam had a class and midterm to had in that morning. Normally I would have thrown some sub plans together and headed home but we were going on a field trip so that would have been very difficult to deal with. Fortunately my mom was able to drive to us and take care of Ella. We took her to the doctor Friday afternoon. I was almost hoping that it was her ears since she had no other symptoms. Fortunately and unfortunately her ears were clear. The doctor seemed to think it was viral and sent us home with instructions to keep her comfortable with tyl.enlol and mot.rin. We does Little E every 4 hours alternating the two drugs and it only dropped her fever to about 101 with it always spiking to 103-104 when at the end of a dose. She ended up sleeping with us for most the night friday and was a sleepy cranky mess all day Saturday. She ate very little but we were to keep her hydrated. She went down at about 7 pm but woke at 10 pm with a fever of 105. We gave her a sponge bath gave her some motr.in and called the on call doctor. It took 2 more pages to get him to call back. I was not pleased. It wasn't a doctor from our practice but I will still be letting our doctor know that there was a problem. Anyway, with the mo.trin and the bath Little E's temp dropped down to 101. The bath dropped it from the frightening 105 to 102. By the time I spoke with the doctor it was 101 so he thought it would be ok to wait to go to the ER until the morning. When Little E woke Sunday morning she had no temp! So Shazam and I decided to wait and see what happened before spending our day at the ER. Little E was still feeling pretty crappy and by mid morning was refusing all food and most liquids. She was pretty irritable so even though she wasn't febrile I gave her a dose of mo.trin at about 1 pm and put her down for a nap. She woke about 30 minutes later with a fever of 101.5. She was now pretty listless and was just laying in my lap crying, so we decided to take her in. We got to the ER at about 2 pm and by then her temp was 103. They gave her a dose of tyl.enol in triage and we were taken back to the pediatric ER about 20 min after we walked in the door. The ER was packed by the way but they got us back in record time. The doctor saw us within 5 minutes of being in a room. When she examined Little E there was a child life specialist with her blowing bubbles singing songs and giving us toys. The doctor was shocked to hear that Little E was a 30 weeker and told us that she would have never guessed that she was a preemie. She look actually shocked that she weighed 2lb 5 ozs at birth! Anyway the doctor felt that it was either a virus, a UTI, or a reaction to her MMR shot that she had 10 days ago. To rule out infection she wanted a blood count and a blood culture done. The nurse, the child life specialist, and a lab tech all came to our room to help with the blood draw. The c.l.s. explained that they would be putting an iv in when they drew the blood so that it would be in if they needed to give iv antibiotics. They were really great at explaining what they were going to do ect. they were very concerned about how Shazam and I were feeling about the blood draw and IV. I reminded them that Little E had been in the nicu for 69 days and that we had seen plenty of IVs placed in Ella and that a blood draw was not a big deal to us. While I don't like to see Little E in pain and she certainly didn't like the poke she handled it like she always does with some tears but she holds still and waits for it to be over. When they were preparing to put the IV in I could see the nurse examining Little E's hand taking note of the numerous scars from the ivs Little E had placed in the first months of her life. The nurse was great and got the iv in with one stick. With the blood draw done we were told we would have results in 45 minutes. The C.L.S. set us up with a dvd and Little E fell asleep on Shazam's chest. The great news is that her blood count came back normal. The bad news is we still don't know what is going on. So we were sent home to wait and see what happens. Her fever was gone when she went to bed tonight. I need to check her in a bit to see if it has gone up again. I am hoping we don't have a repeat of last night. None of us got much sleep and are feeling it today. My mom is coming to watch E tomorrow and I am hoping that she wakes up fever free, feeling like her spunky self and back to daycare on Tuesday.

Oct 14 Ella using walker.mov

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Fall Fun!

Fall in New England is my favorite. There is so much to do and the weather is cool and crisp but the sun is still bright. I love wearing a warm fleece and doing fun things outside. Last year Shazam, Ella and I took a trip apple picking. She was just home from the hospital and a little squeak of a thing.

This year we have been apple picking and to a pumpkin patch. Boy are things different this year! The apple picking was very quick as we didn't want that many apples and it doesn't take long to pick a half a peck. But it was a nice day and we enjoyed our time in the orchard with my mil, sil and niece. Two weekends ago we went off to find a pumpkin for E. We went to a local farm and unfortunately it was very disappointing. First off they wanted us to pay $14 each to go in a have the opportunity to pick apples and pumpkins. That was not going to happen and we convinced the person at the booth that we just wanted to pick a pumpkin and not see the rest of the stuff (rides and petting zoo). Once at the pumpkin patch it was horrible. There were no good pumpkins, in fact many of them were rotten. We ended up posing E by some pumpkins and leaving. I will pick her up a pumpkin at the store and be done with it. I did get some nice pictures so I guess it was ok. This weekend we were up in NH for Great Bubba (great grandpa) and Mimi (mil's birthday). It was fun to see the family and the weather was great. I got some nice shots of E and her cousins enjoying the fall weather.