Hospital

So Christmas came and went. It was fabulous. The following Thursday baby Ellie had a gurglie cough(apparently gurglie isn't a real word, but that's OK. How boring would our language be if we didn't get to make up our own words? I have also learned that nurses make up words too, like guncky and thingy when they chart). I wasn't terribly concerned at first having just gone through a cold with Caleb, Jacob and Joey. I have a nebulizer at home and I'm not afraid to use it. So on Friday and Saturday I spent a lot of time watching Ellie cough and sleep, a lot of sleeping. Saturday around noonish(again not a real word) I had Sariah, Caleb and Ellie at the store. Her cough just sounded icky. It wasn't happening very frequently, but when it did it was juicy gross. She didn't have a runny nose or a fever, just that cough. My 'mommy senses' kicked in and said that we ''needed to go home now." So we did. And I watched that baby breathe all through the night. I kept debating whether or not it was time to go to the hospital. It's not an easy task with 6 other kids and dad working offshore to just up and take someone to the ER. Luckily I have a 12-year-old who could handle things until the cavalry could arrive. I was still swishing this around in my head at 4:30am, when I actually got dressed to take her. I was still hesitant though. The coughing was so intermittent, and I hate the ER. So I gave her another breathing treatment and it worked for three hours. At 8am I called the Dr.'s answering services (it was Sunday) The Dr. on call said to bring her in. That's all I needed to hear. So Spencer held down the fort until my sister got to my house to lend a hand.

At the ER it wasn't a terrible rush rush thing like it has been before when I have taken in other kids with breathing problems. Then again there was only one other person in at that time. And the baby seemed to be fairly OK. So we got in the back and these were her symptoms: a gurglie cough, not eating well, sleeping tons, rib retractions(where the ribs suck in when she breathes) and grunting(making a vocal sound with every breath) these last two symptoms are, what we later learned , signs of respiratory distress. This also goes along with nostril flaring, which we saw a lot of later. The ER team did a breathing treatment, gave her a shot of steroids(I know the baseball players would be jealous, just kidding) and took a chest X-ray and sucked some snot to do an RSV test, which came back positive. A 2 1/2 month old with RSV is not a good thing. After all this and a second breathing treatment the retractions didn't subside enough to appease the ER doc. So he called the on-call pediatrician and they both agreed that baby Ellie should be admitted to the hospital. When I entered that building the last thing I expected was to not leave a hospital room for 58 straight hours. My only rest came when Jason came home from work early(he wasn't supposed to be home till Friday) and stayed the night with her Tuesday.

The first thing that had to happen was to get an IV in. They tried her poor little hand first and then actually got it in her foot. The whole time her little cry sounded like she was saying "Ow Ow" sad, isn't it. This followed with lots and lots of time in her cold mist oxygen tent, breathing treatments every four hours, and snot sucking which, at first, she didn't seem to have much of, snot that is, and of course the IV fluid to keep her hydrated because she wasn't eating.

Since it was Sunday(December 30th) I had to wait until church got out for people to respond to my messages for help. But as soon as it was over we had an influx of help like no other. It was awesome to have felt very alone for one minute and in the next have five people crammed into our hospital room. And that was just for a blessing and to see what I needed. There were more people working on the outside to get some of my kids to one place to stay, and the rest to others. Everything was taken care of so that my focus could now be on taking care of that baby.
I had kept in contact with my husband that entire day. He works at night, and so to wake him as little as possible, I did my best to only call him when I had a complete picture of what was going on. This whole thing was difficult for him because he really wanted to be there for us and to give her a blessing and all the daddy love. The Captain and Tool Pusher on the rig told him that there was a spot on the helicopter the next morning if he needed to come home. After a very stressful night for both of us, we decided that it would be best for daddy to come home.

Later that day her regular Dr. came in and told me the results of the X-ray. Along with RSV she had pneumonia. Unhappy news. But it just meant that we would have antibiotics via the IV for the next 24-48 hours. And some blood would be drawn. My Relief Society President came in while they were attempting to get the blood and got to witness the vampire-ism. They were actually very nice and it was nice to have Sister Stephens there for support.

During the first 48 hours there was a lot of waiting and watching. I did fine during the days, it was at night around 8pm when everything was quiet that I would stand there and cry...just a little, I didn't want anyone to see... a mommy must be brave. I literally slept with one eye open and one ear tuned in. I kept watching the pulse oximeter constantly, making sure that every time the alarm went off it was just because she was moving her foot and not because her oxygen saturation went too low. This happened all night long, Sunday and Monday.
Monday night was New Years Eve. My celebration looked something like this:
















YUP that's it.










Ellie's sat.'s seemed to be maintaining well so the nurse an I decided that we could turn the monitor off for a little while so I could get some sleep. After she had a breathing treatment at 4:00am(which I napped through) I looked at her, she looked very pale and I got a little panicked. I reached up under the tent and picked up her very cold little hand to see if I could get a startle reaction out of her. I dropped her hand and it fell, there was no startle. I jumped up, sat her up and started rubbing her chest, she was fine, just in a very deep sleep... I guess. Needless to say I turned that monitor back on and didn't stop watching it until I left the hospital.

Jason came to relieve me Tuesday night. I was extremely grateful. I needed to get some 'normal' sleep which consisted of Jacob coming in to sleep with me and then waking up at 7am to "watch the dinosaurs. Jason had a good night with Ellie. I don't know if he has impeccable timing or if it's the fact that he has the daddy touch that makes things better but she had amazing improvement over night. Not to mention the other breathing treatment medication that was used to really get the crap in her lungs moving. Maybe it was all three. But things improved so much that after a trial off the O2 and keeping her saturation levels up, with four different prescriptions, Elizabeth got to come home Wednesday, January 2.


This is what mom looks like after not sleeping for 5 days

Thank you to all who helped. And thank you to all who prayed. Heavenly Father was listening.