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.
So the baby didn’t have a poo diaper for about a day and a half, and the doc told us a month ago that she can easily go 3 days like that. So no worries. I picked her up from daycare yesterday, a little squishy feeling maybe, but not bad. The peeps at the daycare told me that I might have to change her soon, and I said I would when I got home.
I wish I would have done it right then….
When we got home I went to pick her up and her butt was wet. Upon further investigation I found that the carseat was brown (and smelly… wet too). It was awful. I quickly put her back down and boiled my hand. I grabbed a towel and picked her up under her shoulders/neck as normal, but picked her lower half up more from her legs as to avoid the need to burn my hand off completely.
Kathy got home just in time. We took her to the bathroom and ended up deciding it was best to just give her a bath. We originally thought the issue was the different style of diapers that we sent to the daycare, but after a closer look we decided that no diaper was made to put up with that kind of punishment.
There will be no pictures with this post, hopefully you’ll be scarred with the mental pictures that I’ve painted for you 
I went to see the doctor today and my blood pressure was where its supposed to be! I’m released to go back to work next week after 6 weeks of being off…..crap!
Time went by way too fast, I really enjoyed my time with Olivia, and it would have been even better if I would have been allowed to leave the house with her. But I survived it anyway!
Kathy
Olivia is holding on to the paci (thanks JP and Liz) in these pictures. Jon walked around the house with her last night and she held on to it for a good 5 minutes.
Today we went to the pediatrician for Olivia’s checkup. Olivia is 20 3/4 inches long now and weights 7.6 lbs.
She got another Hepatitis B shot today and you can imagine how well that went……yeah, she was screaming at the top of her lungs and had real tears for the first time!
The doc said that we should still avoid crowded places for now like grocery store, restaurants and churches! Also, since people are getting sick please make sure you wash your hands or use sanitizer and most important no kissing those fat cheeks or any face to face action unless you want to smear sanitizer on your face and drink some of it……..ouch! Mommy and daddy will take care of the kissing for now until she’s older.
We now don’t have to wake Olivia for feedings anymore! I’m happy about that because 2-3 hours goes by too fast.
Mommy has her doc appointment on wednesday hopefully it will go good as well!
I was getting ready to change Olivia after she spit up on herself and thought to myself “i wonder if she will fit in her cute clothes now?”. Sure enough, she has finally grown into at least one thing….finally no more pulling it over her head, this one is all snap buttons, YAY.
Kathy
