Hospital stay day #2

Being a mommy is a tough job on an ordinary day, but when you throw in sickness, it just gets tougher. Especially when it involves your 3 week old baby girl.

On Friday, Landry seemed to be a normal, healthy little baby. She was laidback as usual and the only abnormal thing was that she was “grunting” a lot. I thought she was just “finding her voice” in all the chaos of our daily lives. Then in the afternoon I realized she wasn’t eating a vigorously as usual and she wasn’t eating every 2 hours as normal. That evening she started to feel a little warm, but not an alarming hotness. Then, I took her temp…100.3. At our 2 week appt the Dr had told us a list of cues that would require us to bring her in. A temp of 100.5 was one of those cues. I called the dr and they had me take her temp rectally. It 101.4 and they wanted me to head down to Blank Children’s Hospital. They said that I would be staying there for a few days and to pack accordingly.

So many thoughts rushed through my head, memories of being in the NICU with Preston, the uncertainty of it all. When we got to the ER, they had to do 3 things because Landry was so young…a catheter, blood draw/IV (which they could only find a vein in her head), and 3 lumbar punctures (spinal taps). They were hoping to only do one lumbar puncture but she was so small that they were unable to get a good draw. On the 3rd try, they decided to send what they had in to the lab and hope it was enough to run a meningitis test. There are a lot of other tests they wanted to run, but there wasn’t enough fluid.

I stayed in the room as much as possible, but there came a point when they made me leave because I was too much to handle. After almost an hour, I was able to go back inside. Thank goodness for my great friend Allie, she came and sat with me at the hospital all night. I couldn’t have done it without her.

Then they admitted Landry to the Peds Unit at Blank where we would stay until Monday at noon. Throughout the next 3 days she received antibiotics and IV fluids because she was throwing up, had diarrhea and not eating as well. On Monday, her cultures came back negative and we were discharged. They will watch her cultures for the next 7 days. There is a 3% chance that the reading will change, but a 97% that she will continue to get better each day.

Thank you for all of the hundreds of prayers and messages of support we have received over the past week. It means more to us than you will ever know.

L was such an amazing little trooper through it all. I wish I could have said the same for myself. A million thanks to Brooke for picking Tim up from the lake so he could be here with us on Saturday. You have no idea how much that kind gesture meant to us!

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Then, because life wasn’t stressful enough, Preston was counting on us to be at church on Saturday night for Taste of Hope. Where he would perform some songs from VBS. Tim stayed at the hospital and I met P, N and my parents at Hope for church and a little TOH. Thank you Donna, Mom and Dad for helping us out this weekend, we couldn’t have done it without you all.

Glad to have Mommy there for hugs and to watch me preform!

"I'm happy to have you here Mommy! I missed you! Is Landry ok?And I lub my cotton candy!"-priorities!