Emergency Room Pros April 20, 2007

Yesterday Fiona was acting very strange for Fiona….you know, she was acting like a “normal” baby…sleeping and very quiet….so I took her temperature in the afternoon…a little high but not too bad. That night Greg got home from his business trip and F was really feeling warm so I took her temp again and this time it was 101.8…..ugh, I called the on call nurse and she said that anything over 101.4 for a baby that age means off to the E.R. we go.

The E.R.? NO! We’ve already been there once and Fiona is only 2 months old…surely there is a cap on this sort of thing? So, with Greg only having been home for 1 hour…off we went. Since we’ve done this before we left the house prepared: food, drinks, overnight bags, fed the pets, fed us….we knew where to park, all about the I.D.’s the paperwork….we were pros.

It was at this time that I realized how tired and sore I was the first time we were there. Fiona was only 8 days old that time so I was very early on in my recovery, and I was MISERABLE….this time I was relaxed and emotionaly stable….it was much better …..well as good as emergency room visits can go.

They took blood and urine…but this time no spinal tap and after observing her and bringing down her fever with tylenol they sent us home and had us visit our Ped. today.

Our Ped. took one look at her labs and knew immediately that the poor little darling has a kidney infection. Apparently it’s not totally uncommon in girls her age and if they see a girl baby with a fever it’s one of the first things they look for. So we were given one BIG antibiotic shot in the thigh and have to get another one tomorrow…..apparently these shots are relatively new and the other option would have been to send us to the hospital for three days for I.V. antibiotics….again…thank god for the shots! Then the fun will really start…the week after next we will have to go to Children’s and they will put dye in her urine and wait till she pees and then do an ultrasound of her kidney’s to see if any of the dye got up into them…apparently a very small percentage of children have a problem with reflux…not related to her acid reflux….where the tube between the bladder and the kidney is too short and the bacteria gets into the kidney…they treat this with a low dose of antibiotics for an extended period of time and as the child grows that tube gets longer and the problem corrects itself…only .09% of kids will actually need minor surgery to correct the problem.

Sigh. So. I had to ask the Dr. today…..is this just bad luck? uh….I know, we are lucky people…I mean there are thousands of parents out there who have truly sick children and I can’t imagine the suffering they all go through on a daily basis….so I know that….but come on….two trips to the emergency room, an eye infection, acid reflux, colic/fussiness and now kidney infections AND SHE’S ONLY TWO MONTHS OLD!!!!! please tell me this is just bad luck. { i know, and i truly feel in my heart that it is….i just needed to hear it from a professional! } She assured it me it was….that Fiona is a very healthy little girl and that all of these things are very normal things that happen to millions of babies her age…we just happened to get a lot of them =)

Now I see….now I see how important my little fire ball’s temperament is. If she wasn’t so stubborn…so energetic….so sure of herself all of this might really get her down….but she’s a fighter. If she was one of those “normal” “good” babies I might be more worried. A quiet baby that goes with the flow and is sick all the time? Well that sounds like trouble doesn’t it? But a little girl who isn’t afraid to tell you what she thinks about things, who won’t settle for anything less than exactly what she wants, a kicker, a thrasher, a squirm out of your diaper and onto your tummy 2 month old…well she sounds like a girl who can take care of herself doesn’t she?