Thursday I took in Afton for a routine check up at his pediatrician's office, and while there everyone was commenting on how raspy he was sounding. Now, Cortney and I had been watching over him very closely since Monday when he started wheezing, but we thought that it was just another phase of this awful cold he has had off and on since January. We decided that we would see if it went away in a few days and if not, we would get it checked out. So at the doctor I had him looked over. At first I was pretty calm and thought that if anything they would just put him on another round of antibiotics. After a few minutes of the doctors and nurses crowding around him I started to get really really worried. The two pediatricians in the office both looked him over, listened to his lungs and heart, and eventually did a oxygen saturation test on him to see how much oxygen was actually getting into his body through his breathing. The levels read around 75-79 percent, versus the normal 90-100 range. Naturally that scared me and I felt like the worst mom ever for not realizing how sick he was. The doctors were even surprised at how sick he was because he was still sitting up, rolling around, talking, and playing very actively. Yes, he was crankier than normal, but most babies when they get sick like that get very lethargic. Afton, however, was his usual busy self.
The doctors then gave me the option of either going home with a nebulizer (a machine that diffuses steroids through an air compressor) or going across the street to the hospital to make sure that things weren't too serious. Being the worried first time mom I am I decided to take him to the hospital, and boy am I glad I did!
When I arrived at the E.R. they checked him in and did a ton of tests on him to see if he was RSV positive. Long story short, he was RSV positive with a mild case of bronchiolitis. At that point we were told that he would need to stay overnight and would most likely go home in the morning. We were taken to our own private hospital room and were set up with a bed, crib, and pull out bed/chair. Afton was put on oxygen and was given breathing treatments every four hours to open up his lungs. It was so sad to see him with the oxygen tubes in his nose! Poor guy took it like a champ though. Once he started the breathing treatments it was amazing to hear how much better he sounded and how much easier he could breath! I am so glad that we decided to admit him to the hospital.
Anyways, our overnight stay turned out to be a 3 night stay. Afton still needed to be on oxygen for a while before we could go home. The doctors wanted to make sure that he could breath well on his own for a night before sending us home to ensure he wouldn't have a hard time breathing at home. We were finally cleared to go home Sunday morning. Now that he is home, we are still giving him breathing treatments through a nebulizer, but he is doing so much better!
Some things about staying with a sick baby in a hospital:
The cribs look like jails. They are tall and made of metal, and I swear Afton banged his head on the rails every single time we put him in the crib. The poor kid is just too active for his own good!
They feed the baby better than the adults. Now, I know I should have expected this since I delivered at the hospital Afton was at this weekend, but I was still surprised that they would only give us one adult hospital meal even though both of us were staying there with him! On the upside, they brought us tons of baby food, baby juice, cereal, and pedialyte that we ended up hoarding and bringing home with us. Afton still doesn't eat a lot of solid food yet (about a jar a day) and ate even less at the hospital since he was sick. I also think he wasn't all that interested in eating the jarred baby food because he is used to the fresh purees that I make him. So that means that we now have a bunch of baby food stocked up for travel!
If your baby is highly contagious (like with RSV) you aren't allowed to leave the room without the baby wearing a face mask. Like that was ever going to work, and believe me we tried. He hated wearing the darn thing. So we stayed in our room for nearly four days watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, The Food Network, and a variety of movies the hospital provided. This little guy is in serious need of media detox! He loved it though :)
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| The cute baby face mask they had for Afton had Mickey Mouse characters on it! Too bad I didn't get a picture of it on him... |
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| Napping with the oxygen tube Sunday morning. |
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| I don't know if you can see this but the tape they used to secure Afton's monitor had little cars on it. |
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