Tiny hand

Tiny hand
November 20, 2010 (one day old)

Lilypie Premature Baby tickers

Lilypie Premature Baby tickers

Friday, March 9, 2012

Homecoming anniversary

It was one year ago today that we brought Cayden home for the first time after 111 days in the NICU.  It seems so long ago and I can't even digest all that's happened in this past year.  All I know is I never imagined we'd get here in such good shape!

I think Cayden wanted to celebrate by forcing me to take him to see Dr. Rosenberg, his current pediatrician and one of the attending neonatologists while at the NICU.  It all started last night when Cayden got pretty fussy at dinner.  He didn't eat much then just started crying.  Jason took him upstairs and checked his temperature - 99.5 - so he gave him a dose of Tylenol.  Since he's cutting two molars, we figured his teeth were hurting.  He was still very fussy for the next hour or so until we could get him to bed, but amazingly, he slept through until 5:30.  He usually doesn't wake up until around 8, but I wasn't surprised he was up that early.  Since he didn't eat much for dinner, I thought hunger woke him.  His temperature was up to 100.5 and although he drank a whole bottle of milk and ate a bit for breakfast, he was still pretty fussy.  More Tylenol didn't seem to help.

Today was the day Jason left for two months in Cairo.  I had to take him to the airport, so after breakfast, all four of us loaded up in the car for the ride.  I thought Cayden would sleep in the car, but he didn't.  We dropped Daddy off, said our tearful goodbyes, then the three of us headed home.  Once we got in the house, the non-stop crying began.  He would not eat, he wouldn't sleep, he was absolutely inconsolable.  The only way I could settle him down was to hold him, and then sometimes even that didn't help.

The home health nurse was scheduled to come to the house to give him his last dose of Synagis (the RSV vaccine) this afternoon, but since he wasn't feeling well, I wasn't sure if we should still do it or not.  I called and spoke to a nurse at the Special Care Clinic and she advised us not to give him the vaccine and that it sounded serious enough that I should bring him in to be seen.  She said it sounded like maybe he had an ear infection and since it was Friday, she didn't think it was wise to wait it out over the weekend.  Apparently Dr. Rosenberg wasn't seeing patients today, but the nurse paged him to ask his advice and he said he'd come down from his office and see Cayden at 2:45.  I really appreciated that.

So after a few more hours of inconsolable crying, the three of us (I had to bring Jamison along since I'm now a pseudo-single mom as of 10:00 this morning) loaded back up into the truck and headed to Children's Hospital.  Dr. Rosenberg examined him and diagnosed him as having a viral infection (most likely para influenza) with a touch of croup.  I was panicked at the mention of him having croup again after our experience being hospitalized for it last fall.  Hopefully, now that he's five months older and stronger, it won't be as severe.  The really strange thing is that aside from a slight fever, being fussy, and not eating well, he's really not showing any signs of being sick (no runny nose, no cough, no sneezing.  The "croupy" noise comes when he inhales while crying, and I never even noticed it.)

Anyway, he got a dose of steroids at the office and we were told to keep him hydrated, control any pain with Ibuprofen, and to run a cool mist humidifier in his room at night.  They sent us home with a prescription for another dose of steroids if he gets worse but said one dose usually does the trick.  He napped briefly in the late afternoon, ate a decent dinner and drank a good bit of milk before falling asleep around 9 tonight - I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he'll sleep through the night and kick this bug soon.  It's going to be a looooong 60 days without Daddy if there are many more like today.

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