Jon & Kathy

Don’t try to steer with your forearms.

She just ate a good meal. This is what she does after.

Here is a video that Jon put together of Olivia! We will soon post more that are older and some newer ones.

It is a respiratory virus that is going around right now. Only young kids really get it, adults can, but wouldn’t really notice. It affects the smallest bronchials by breaking down the outer (well inner) most layer and causes chest congestion. An adult might just have a lightly raspy cough, a 3 year old would develop a fever possibly, and an infant might have to be put on oxygen.

She’s lost about half a pound, which puts her at about 8lb 12oz right now, and she’s coming up on 3 months old. She is doing extremely well with it, but her cough sounds awful. Our pediatrician gave us his personal cell number to call if she starts wheezing, turns blue, etc. He said he can get her set up with breathing treatment 24×7 faster than we could be seen at the emergency room. Nice guy. He also said that 100% of the cases he’s seen result in a trip to the hospital if the kid is under 1 month. She’s close to that, so he said we’d more than likely be giving him a call.

She’s actually doing well with it, and is happy for the most part. She started to clear up today, but is sounding worse again tonight. I don’t think she’s going to get bad enough to start wheezing though, unless that happens tonight. I think that if she makes it through the night that she’ll pull through on her own. If not it may mean a couple of days in the hospital until it clears up. Fun. Believe it or not I’m not actually nervous about it. I’m confident in our doc as well as what I’ve read that we just need to act when the time comes and the appropriate people will get her cleared up. It is serious, but not the end of the world.

She might as not even wear the things. Every time she poops it manages to get into her clothes and up her back. Before any of you think that we should try another diaper, let me tell you, it isn’t the brand of diaper that is failing. NO diaper can hold the amount of stuff that my baby can put into it. It’s like pouring 5 gallons of water into a dish sponge… eventually shit is going everywhere.

Today, the baby was on her 3rd day of a raspy cough and another eye infection (which turned out to be another clogged tear duct). I took her to the doc. Kathy had just changed her about an hour before, and the nurse asked me to strip the baby down. There were brown spots on her clothes already. And a onesie at that… this will be important soon. It was at least twice as bad as the last post I made about this topic. The deal is that I can clean with baby wipes all day, but they don’t do a lot. You’re wiping something wet with something wet… not a lot of soaking action like I needed. Another nurse came in laughing and helped out. I couldn’t get her clothes off over her head without making cleanup worse, so I asked for scissors. She’ll be 5x this size next week and won’t be able to wear that top anyway. Fortunately the laughing nurse was able to roll the onesie inside and keep the top half of the baby relatively clean.

One travel pack and half of another of wipes later and the baby was clean and happy. The cough will fix itself in the next couple of days. I’m quickly understanding the waterhose method of changing a diaper.

Almost.

Yeah…..