E.R.

What a night. Our family (minus Cooper) spent 8+ hours in the Pediatric ER last night with our poor little girl.

Our sweet baby has been a little sick all week – runny diapers and horrible diaper rash. A couple of calls the doctor’s office and they said to just keep them posted but as long as she was eating & drinking & acting normal, to just keep going on. Friday I got the dreaded call from daycare to come get Mals because she had a fever and was really lethargic. We came home and she was just laying around and not crawling or walking or anything. After calling the doctor again Saturday afternoon, they suggested we bring her in to the ER.

They determined she was dehydrated and probably had a viral infection which was causing the diarrhea and yucky diaper rash. The nurses had to poke her THREE TIMES to get her IV started (Mallory was a tough little girl – all the nurses were saying how strong she was when she was fighting them as they were poking her). Mals had to have this big board taped to her hand to keep the IV hookup thing in and she thought that was sort of fun to wave around. She ended up getting a bag of fluids and then actually had the energy to drink a bottle. After all that, she was almost back to herself (which was cool, considering it was like 11.30p at night) and had finally produced a wet diaper and we were about to be discharged. But when I pointed out that she still didn’t want to stand up – she wouldn’t bear ANY weight on her right leg, the docs were very concerned. We were sent off for a round of x-rays and ultrasounds – all of which came back normal. So they sent her blood off to check some other stuff and we got more x-rays, and again ~ everything came back normal. The conclusion is that she has arthritis as a result of her viral infection, which after doing a little internet research this morning doesn’t seem serious.

We ended up being discharged at 4am this morning with instructions to keep her on Tylenol & Motrin every three hours and if she still wasn’t bearing weight or walking today, we were supposed to go back to the hospital. Good news is that she stood up on her own this morning and has taken a few steps. She isn’t back to 100% but at least it looks as though we’ll be able to avoid another trip to the ER today and just follow up with her regular doctor tomorrow. She has been good about bottles today and is taking a nap now – which sounds like a good idea for mommy too. Night-night.