The Readiness Is All

Tuesday morning, CB woke up with a totally innocuous runny nose. She was a little grumpy, but we went to the park and played on the slides and she was fine. Wednesday morning she woke up happy and delightful, even though she slept a little longer than usual. During the day she got grumpier and grumpier, but I assumed it was just the cold running its normal course. That evening she clearly wasn't feeling great. She wanted to snuggle a lot more than usual and didn't have much of an appetite, so we put her to bed early and she went down without any protest.

Snuggling with my sick baby - totally normal.

And then she woke up every twenty minutes. All. Night. Long. As soon as she started getting into REM sleep she woke herself up coughing and started crying, and then she would start falling back asleep and the process would start all over again. Around 10:30, we decided to see if she would do better if we tried to let her sleep with us for a little bit. Eric gave her a blessing of comfort in the hopes that it would help her get through the night. She slept for a little longer at a time, but continued waking up (plus she was hogging the bed.) She also seemed to be having a hard time breathing, but it didn't seem too out of the ordinary for a stuffy nosed baby at night. After a couple of hours, we tried putting her back in her crib, but we were starting to get a little frustrated (plus we were sad she was so miserable).

Around 1:30, Eric called Teledoc, a service we have through our insurance where we can call a doctor whenever we want so we can check before going in to the doctor (since our insurance isn't amazing). They told us that her consistent waking up and heavy breathing were normal for a baby with a cold, so Eric and I decided to just ride it out and take shifts. (Side note: we will be cancelling Teledoc shortly. We found out that our pediatrician has a night line, and CB's own doctor was on call that night.)  Eric took the first one and snuggled her on the couch and tried to doze, and after a few hours I did the same. By the time Eric woke up, CB's breathing sounded awful, she was exhausted and totally lethargic, so we decided to take her to the doctor. Eric had a job, so he held CB for 10 minutes while I threw on clothes, and then we ran to the doctor while he got ready and headed to the Women's Tech Awards. (Both of us were in slightly exhausted stupors.) We thought she might have croup or something like that, and when we called our pediatrician, the nurse seemed to think we should come in right away.

Thursday morning, just before we went into the doctor.

One of many positions in which she fell asleep, then woke right back up after about 20 minutes.

By the time we got to the doctor's office, CB was making really audible sad noises with every breath. I didn't even finish checking in before the nurse had us in the back room to check her oxygen. She put a little band-aid with a sensor on her toe. After a minute she said, "I'm going to check her other toe. She isn't blue enough for her oxygen to be this low." And then she checked the other toe. And then the nurses started pouring into the room with oxygen masks and Albuterol.

At that point, CB's pediatrician came in and told me that the Albuterol (which is a medication they use for asthma patients) would hopefully help relax her bronchial tubes enough that her oxygen could get up to normal. But, she explained, if they couldn't get her breathing better pretty quickly, we would need to go to the hospital. And because her oxygen was low, we would need to take an ambulance, because that was standard procedure for respiratory problems. At this point, I started crying like a crazy person and the nurse offered to call Eric. (At some point they asked if there was anyone else they could call to be with me - Grandma or someone, and that made me cry harder because my mom and dad will be back from their mission in a WEEK, for crying out loud.)

Well, when they stopped giving her oxygen it immediately dropped back down, so the next thing I knew I was running to my car for the carseat, and when I came back there were 4 guys standing in the hall with one of those giant scary stretchers. They strapped the carseat to it while they asked me some questions, and then they buckled CB in and hooked her up to all kinds of monitors.

On the ambulance ride, the ambulance guys (paramedics? EMTs? Firemen? I'm just not sure, but one of them was named Roundy) tried to make small talk, probably because I kept crying. CB relaxed and fell asleep on the way there (probably because she was so happy she had air). My favorite moment of this ride (if you can say such a thing when you're in an ambulance with your 14-month-old) was when one of the guys said to the other, "Okay, now what's the most important thing to do?" And the other guy started saying something about checking her levels of something and the first guy interrupted him and said, "No. Get her a stuffed animal!" So CB got a teddy bear from her ambulance ride, which she wrapped her little hand around and held through most of her treatments.

We got to Primary Children's Hospital and they got CB started on another treatment of Albuterol. They explained to me that she probably didn't have asthma, and even if she did they wouldn't diagnose that until she'd had more than one episode and was over two years old, but since she was responding to asthma treatments, they were going to keep giving it to her until she was breathing better. They told me I would have to keep her mask on while she was getting the treatment because she wouldn't like it, but she was so exhausted and sick she barely touched it.

Albuterol treatment, ambulance bear, sad baby.

At some point, my brother texted me and asked what he could do, and I told him it would be nice if Eric could be there, so he went and relieved him from where he was filming the Women's Tech Awards. (Clearly we were not thinking like functioning people, or we would have come up with this solution earlier, since my brother is Eric's business partner.) Eric came up to the hospital about the time that the doctors came and told us that they thought CB was going to need to stay over night, which floored me. I knew she was sick, but it hadn't even occurred to me that she would be staying in the hospital.

They told us that they were going to the Rapid Treatment Unit (the RTU) which they use almost exclusively for cases like this - kids who aren't sick enough to be admitted the hospital proper, but who are sick enough that they need to be observed for about 24 hours, so they need a more comfortable, long-term room than the ER. (For the parents, that is. There wasn't anywhere to sleep in the ER room.) They wanted us to be able to have her off the Albuterol or off the oxygen because they didn't want to send us home with both, so until they could decide which was helping more, we couldn't leave. On the bright side, the RTU is cheaper than a regular hospital room because it's kind of between outpatient and inpatient care. It also has doctors in the unit at all times because their goal is to get the kids home as quickly as possible, so they get pretty intensive care.

Before they moved us to the RTU, they gave CB another treatment of Albuterol and my brother, who had finished his job, came by to give CB a blessing with Eric. The blessing was really lovely and helped me feel more calm about the whole thing. (Funny side note: in our church we use consecrated olive oil to give blessings of healing. Eric carries a little vial on his keychain, but he hadn't changed it out for a little while and it had gone kind of green. They were debating whether that mattered when our nurses and respiratory specialist came in, and when we asked if we could give her a blessing before they put in her IV, the respiratory specialist (Steve) asked if they needed oil. Because of course they had that at the hospital. Eric couldn't get over the strangeness of Utah and the prevalence of Mormons.)

We moved to the RTU and they put an IV in CB because she was dehydrated and too lethargic to drink much, and they said this would help loosen up her congestion and perk her up a bit. They did this by turning off all of the lights in the room and putting a flashlight under her hand so they could see her tiny little veins. The nurse who did this was so excellent and got it in perfectly on the first try with minimal fuss from CB, although that was probably partly because she was just so out of it.

Sad baby IV

We got settled, had some lunch (first food either of us had eaten all day at about 3:00) and then Eric headed home to pick up a few supplies to get us through the night. Poor CB had to have another Albuterol treatment, and she was much more distressed about it this time, which I assumed was because she was starting to feel better. It took a long time to calm her down. Weirdly, we found a station on the TV that just had calming music and fish (like an in-room aquarium) which she LOVED. She was more perky than she had been all day looking at those fish. She also ate a little applesauce and some cheerios, which made me very happy.

Watching the fish (Friday morning, not the day she went into the hospital.)  So happy.

The next few hours were rough. Lots of treatments, lots of calming, more treatments, more calming. None of us got much sleep through the night with people in and out to test vitals and give treatments, but the nurses decided to stop giving her Albuterol and try suctioning her nose out instead (which was HORRIBLE for CB and horrible for me to watch) and it seemed to help even more than the medicine had, so we kept on that route. In the morning, the nurse asked if CB was a light sleeper at home because she kept waking up when they came in. I told her CB has been sleeping through the night since she was 2 months old and bit my tongue so I wouldn't say, "Maybe she kept waking up because you kept coming in and flipping on the lights and poking her. Ever think of that? That wakes me up." (She really was a fine nurse, but this struck me as a slightly ridiculous thing to say. I realize you have things to do and need a light, but she didn't wake up when the tech came in to do vitals because the tech left the dang light off.)

The night was also long because the monitor on CB's toe kept falling off or coming loose, and then everything would start beeping and we'd all freak out and wake up, until it had happened multiple times and then I was just mad about all of the stupid loud instruments everywhere because I was so tired. Someone finally put more tape on her toe at like 5 am.

When we woke up the next morning and they suctioned out CB's nose again, she was downright perky. They gave us a toddler menu and we ordered her some scrambled eggs, a blueberry muffin, and a strawberry smoothie. She was delighted about the eggs, and it calmed her down very quickly post-suction.

After breakfast someone brought us a stack of books, and then CB wandered around the room a little. She was acting so much more like her normal self, and it was good for all of our souls. After she'd wandered around a bit I snuggled her to sleep.

Exploring her room

Oh hey!

Eric was calling around because he wanted to take care of our bill before we left. We have insurance, but we have a high deductible and wanted to try to pay in cash because we'd heard you could get a discount. After three phone calls and a trek to the financial office, he found out that if we decided not to have them go through our insurance at all, we could get a 25% discount, and if we paid it off within 30 day we got another 15% off. 40% off for not using our insurance. Our bill was pretty much our whole deductible, so we would have paid all of it anyway. Kind of still amazed about that one.

(We also told our nurses we would be paying cash at this point, and weirdly, suddenly we were on the fast track out of there and they were asking if we wanted them to give her tylenol or wait until we got home. Obviously they didn't skimp on care and we didn't ask them to, but the perspective is different when they know your insurance isn't paying it all for you. Nuts.)

One more suction and a check by the doctor, and by 2:00 we were on our way home - with an oxygen tank and an order to be able to go to the suction clinic as much as we needed for the next week. We all felt so relieved to get off the IVs and the monitors and out of the hospital. CB had a huge smile on her face as we pulled into our garage. She walked around her room with new delight and was especially excited to see the beads that she loves to wear all over the house.

Final check with the doctor

Heading home!

The oxygen tank has been fun - she's basically on a leash, and although she has been pretty tolerant of the cannula in her nose, she gets frustrated and tangled. It's hard to go up stairs, and if she starts to wander off, I basically have to jump up and follow her with the rolling tank or else she gets pulled back by her face. We've been reading lots of books (Eric even stopped by DI and picked up a stack of new ones for her), taking long baths to help clear out her nose, and taking walks so she'll hold still and rest without being frustrated. Tomorrow we go to the doctor and I'm hoping she can get off the oxygen. I'm so grateful that she recovered so quickly, and I'm so grateful she's been such a trooper through all of this, and that I had Eric to go through it with me. Initiation into the terrors of motherhood complete, I guess.

A couple of final notes: I found it weird that once we got settled in the hospital and the treatment started, I felt very calm. I knew that the doctors were doing what needed to be done, and I wasn't scared that CB wasn't going to come through it. I feel very grateful for this gift of peace, which I am sure came from my Heavenly Father.

We have had such wonderful support from our friends and family. I received so many sweet texts, emails, and messages sending love and offering help if they were near by. Once we got home, my sweet neighbor brought us her delicious cinnamon bread, and my sister-in-law sent us dinner Sunday night even though her own kids are sick. We are so grateful for the prayers and warmth we have felt from the people who love us and our little one.

And now some pictures of being home with an oxygen tank!

So happy to have this laughing little girl back.

Saturday afternoon walk to the grocery store for fritters.

At home church.

Daddy sure is hilarious.

Checking out some new books