Maybe the next time I accidentally cut Avery's fingernails too short, I won't think it's so sad when she gets upset... Cause you know what beats that out on the sad scale? Watching your precious baby get stuck not once, but three times in the ER for an IV. Unbearable.
Aves got a high fever Friday night- 102. By the time our pediatrician called us back, we had checked it again and it had gone down to 100.1. He instructed us that if it reached back up over 100.4, we were immediately to take her to the ER to get checked out, since she is so young. Saturday morning, she woke up fever free, and we thought she had just had a 12 hour virus. Unfortunately, her fever spiked again Saturday night, but not high enough, so the nurse on call told us to watch her closely, and if it got higher to take her in. Sunday morning, she woke up with a low grade fever, about 99.3. Sunday night, Avery was being fussy, which she never really is, unless she is starving or tired, and she felt a little warm, but not the 102 warm, so I checked it again and it was 101.3... ER it was
We were immediately triaged and sent back to the room, and the resident came in to check her out. He said that they would want to check to make sure she didn't have a UTI and do a CBC (blood work) to check all her labs (unfortunately I had expected all of this). In case you didn't know, 12 week old babies have extremely tiny little veins. When the nurse came in to stick her she said, "Mom you can go out in the hallway if you need to". I told her that I was a nurse, and I could handle it... But on top of that I was thinking, I'm not going to leave my precious child in here alone while you poke and prod on her! Are you crazy?! After 20 minutes of them looking for a good vein, sticking her, trying to thread it in, readjusting the line, blowing the line, and my baby girl screaming bloody murder, I was about to pick her up and run out of that place. They told us they would give her a little break and come back later to try again... Oh great. As soon as they left the room, I snatched her up and started crying. I will never in my life forget the way she looked at me while they were digging into her sweet little foot. Only consolation is that there is no way she will remember it.
An hour later, another nurse comes in, sticks a line in her hand, and barely gets enough blood out for the labs... They come back in 20 minutes later and inform us that the CBC had clotted off before they had time to run it through the machine... All I know, it's a good thing that my mom wasn't there, or those nurses would have heard an ear-full :) Matthew was about to lose it, and my heart dropped knowing that they were going to have to stick her once more. This time they sent in a former NICU nurse, and it was a fairly swift process. Of course after all this was said and done, all her labs came back completely normal... Praise God. And after 7 hours, we were finally able to take her home. Just a terrible virus.
Avery Grace, Mommy and Daddy cannot handle you being sick. We hope that we never have to visit an Emergency Room with you ever again. You were an absolute champ. Pretty sure in the end it was more traumatizing for us than you! You were all smiles pretty much right after they were done. Now I have a slight understanding of how my mom and dad must have felt when I was in the hospital VERY sick with bacteria in the blood as a baby....Helpless
We love you so much baby girl.
While all this was happening, our good friend Katherine Garman was here, bless her heart. I will post pics up of her visit soon!