Last Sunday we were returning home from an exciting weekend away with some of our friends and brief visits with both my and Barry’s parents. It was exciting because we were finally revealing the news that I’m pregnant and Maggie’s going to be a big sister! B2, as we’ve been calling the little bean in my belly, is due to join us at the end of January 2013.
We stopped by my grandparent’s house on the way home to share with them the news and everything went as planned. [Another post I’ll have to write down people’s reactions to Maggie’s dress. Such a fun way to share with people!] We ended up having dinner and dessert with them out in their patio and we all watched as Maggie bounced off the walls going from one activity to another.
But that night, or more specifically, early the next morning, Maggie woke up puking. We thought that perhaps she’d had some bad food and after we cleaned ourselves up – and the second pile of puke that arrived – we fell back asleep. But the next day didn’t bring any respite. In fact, it got worse. Puke and diarrhea coupled with a nasty fever. Barry went to work and Maggie and I hunkerd down on the couch, me taking her temp, giving her medicine, changing diapers, and hoping she’d keep some fluids in.
She didn’t.
That evening she had her second febrile seizure after not being able to keep any medicine in her system to maintain her temperature. Thankfully Barry was home for this and he was the calm in the center of the storm. I later told him that I did him a favor by NOT having a heart attack as he held Maggie and I cried and cried trying to talk soothing words to our baby.
Almost immediately after her siezure, which lasted the longest minute or two in my life, we drove to an urgent care facility near our house. After being there for about an hour and discovering Maggie had a temperature of 103, they sent us to the ER in Everett, a scary 30 minute car ride away.
The doctors in the ER gave Maggie some anti-nausea meds and some tylenol (not oral) to maintain her fever. Within an hour she was running around the room and hopping between us as we made sure she sipped down the juice that they’d given us. We headed home without a diagnosis since Mags had a ‘normal’ exam and this left us with the false hope that perhaps this was just a blip on the radar.
The next day was much worse than the previous days – tons of puke and diarrhea coupled with a fever that just would not break, even with tylenol that was given non-orally. It seemed like that’s how the next few days went. My mom came down and we worked hard to get Maggie to take sips of coconut water, gatorade and anything liquid. We celebrated two sips. We acted like popsicles were the best thing in the world. Maggie could have cared less, she felt like total shit. It was awful.
By Wednesday night things hadn’t changed and I reached my limit – I could handle puke and diarrhea until the cows some home. I can even celebrate tiny sips of coconut water for a dehydrated baby, but I knew that I could not handle seeing another febrile seizure. The only way for Maggie not to have another one was to get her fever under control and it appeared that the fever was only going to go down she could take Ibuprofen orally.
After some more puke and a high temperature, we went to Seatttle Children’s Hospital. I never, ever want to go there again, but the service and the facility was amazing. We were there for roughly 3.5 hours and by the time we left, we again had no real diagnosis as to why Maggie had a fever, severe puke and diarrhea. I can’t bring myself to go into details about some of the tests they ran, but there were tears shed and I’m sure it was horrifying for Maggie at times.
Although they didn’t send us home with a diagnosis, they did send us home with some of that glorious anti-nausea meds that Maggie was given in the ER on Monday night. The anti-nausea medicine was fantastic in that it allowed her tummy to be tricked into keeping liquids and medicine down and not puking it up right away.
And eventually that dang fever subsided.
And eventually she kept liquids down.
And eventually they came back up again.
And so on and so forth.
Little by little, our girl with a firecracker of a personality has been creeping and fighting her way back to her sassy self. I’ve felt myself getting back in to the routine of simple reminders and she’s back to attempting to bargain her way out of things she doesn’t like to do.
Today, a week after we were galavanting our way down the I-5 corridor spreading the good news about our growing family, I feel like we care so much more. We care about the littlest things – fresh water, regular poops, actual tears, playing a card game for the millionth time – and some pretty big things too – immune systems, medicine, sleep cycles, our families, and our ability to help nurse our baby back to health.
As I type this Maggie is blowing bubbles off our back stoop. Some how she has decided that after each bubble blow, she needs to clean off the wand. I think that might have something to do with the fact that she dipped the wand into the dirt while we weren’t looking…..
