The last blog mentioned a bit about Miss. Brianna’s first illness, but I figured I’d give the parent account in this blog. I will admit that because of the last 2 ½ weeks, I have forced Bree to make a New Years’ resolution to never get sick again!! Not only was it difficult taking care of her, but it was also extremely difficult on the emotions, as I’m sure many of my mommy and daddy friends can attest to. I haven’t felt that helpless in such a long time. It was so difficult knowing that my baby didn’t feel good, and yet I had nothing to give her to make her feel better. Initially, I had baby Tylenol that I tried giving her when she was really cranky that moving day, but the Tylenol caused her to get sick and vomit even more than without it. So for awhile, all Jason and I had were our arms to comfort her and bottles of formula and Pedialite (which she very rarely kept down).
As I talked about in my last blog, the move was extremely chaotic and stressful alone, but then to add to it a sick baby was just overload. We somehow managed to get into our new home and somewhat set up shop with just enough time to take care of a very sick little girl for the next 2 1/2 weeks. I felt so bad for her. You could tell that she felt miserable as she lost all effort to play or connect with people. She just sat there looking vacant in the eyes, slept, or was eating and then vomiting soon after the feeding. She stopped cooing, stopped smiling, and stopped making any effort to play. I felt horrible! To make matters worse, she began to wake up in the middle of the night, which she hasn't done in months. It's hard enough to take care of a sick baby, but when you don't get a solid night's sleep...woah. After about 2 weeks of this stomach bug taking our beautiful little girl, we decided to take her to the doctors. I'm really glad we did, because it was determined that she had lost a whole pound throughout this illness. A pound to us is nothing, but a pound to a little girl who only weighs 13 pounds is significant. The doctor took this weight loss pretty seriously and requested that Jason take Bree to the hospital for blood work to ensure that her electrolyte count was normal. Jason said the hospital visit/blood work was hard to do as he had to hold her while the lab technicians pricked her heel and took a vial of blood. Poor thing. The doctor prescribed her two different medications. One for her diaper rash and one to limit/reduce her stomach acid, making it less likely that she would continue to vomit. We then had to monitor her and bring her back to the doctor's the following day for another weight check. Thankfully, at the next doctor's appointment it was determined that she had gained by 1-2 ounces of the weight she had lost. We were moving the right direction!!
Of course work made things challenging for both Jason and me. I had zapped most of my time off during my maternity leave and Jason was zapping his time as he was required to take off of work in order to pick up Bree from daycare center when she was called out sick. Thankfully, my supervisor was amazing with the whole thing. She had a 8 month of baby herself and really understood how difficult this whole thing was on our family. Another plus was that this all happened right after the Christmas holiday, meaning my program hours were changed to 9-12pm in the morning. My supervisor arranged it so I could take the work laptop home and do some work from home while relieving Jason from sick baby duty so he could put in a half a day at work. Of course this arrangement wasn't so simple as the work laptop of course had some glitches that needed to be worked out. Thankfully, this only took a few days to work out, because Jason and I were flying through out sick time. Jason started with 6 months of built up sick time and after this stomach bug ended up with 1/2 hour of sick time. I started with 13 hours of sick time and ended up with 3 hours, only thanks to my supervisor who allowed me to work from home. I couldn't believe how quickly our sick time was eaten up by this bug.
Of course work made things challenging for both Jason and me. I had zapped most of my time off during my maternity leave and Jason was zapping his time as he was required to take off of work in order to pick up Bree from daycare center when she was called out sick. Thankfully, my supervisor was amazing with the whole thing. She had a 8 month of baby herself and really understood how difficult this whole thing was on our family. Another plus was that this all happened right after the Christmas holiday, meaning my program hours were changed to 9-12pm in the morning. My supervisor arranged it so I could take the work laptop home and do some work from home while relieving Jason from sick baby duty so he could put in a half a day at work. Of course this arrangement wasn't so simple as the work laptop of course had some glitches that needed to be worked out. Thankfully, this only took a few days to work out, because Jason and I were flying through out sick time. Jason started with 6 months of built up sick time and after this stomach bug ended up with 1/2 hour of sick time. I started with 13 hours of sick time and ended up with 3 hours, only thanks to my supervisor who allowed me to work from home. I couldn't believe how quickly our sick time was eaten up by this bug.
One sick little pup! Napping with mommy
Napping with daddy on Christmas day
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