.Baby Blues.

Tired Much???

This week has been one of the longest weeks of our lives! Our story begins with Avery sleeping all day on Sunday..me thinking "LUCKY ME" she's sleeping because she was up ALL night last night! We were at my grandparents house hanging out, and instead of Avery giving everyone huge smiles like she normally does, she just wanted to cuddle and sleep. We noticed she was a little warm, but we thought it was from being in a warm house, we decided we should take her temperature to make sure everything was normal...well it wasn't, it was just over 102 degrees! We called her pediatrician and he advised us to take her to the emergency room...by this time it was about 8:30pm, so we knew we had a loooong night ahead of us. We ended up being there until about 2:30 am, they did blood cultures and urine tests...they had to try a catheter twice because she wouldn't go, that was pretty painful for her...in the end we found out she had a UTI (urinary tract infection) they gave her two big shots of antibiotics in her legs and sent us home. It took us about 45 minutes to get home, because of the snow..it usually only takes about 20. We were only home long enough for me to feed Avery, before we noticed she wasn't acting okay. Scott was holding her and noticed that her breathing was weird, she was raspy and wouldn't breath for several seconds...she was also shaking and her arms and legs were tightly pressed against her body. He gave her to me so I could try and comfort her while he called the emergency room. We decided we were going to take her back, but as I was putting her in her carseat, I noticed that she wasn't opening her eyes, and was still shaking and not breathing right. We made the decision to call an ambulance, due to the road conditions and her breathing. When the EMT's showed up, after what seemed like hours, they gave her some oxygen and drove us back to hospital. Avery's breathing became more regular with the help of the oxygen. We've never been more scared in our lives. She looked so helpless and lifeless, it was something I'll never forget.

Avery's security anklet.

Sunday afternoon, before we realized how sick she was.

Avery's pokes

Finally asleep!

Naked baby, trying to help bring her fever down.

She looks so sick in this picture.

Avery's bed for a few nights.

So by the time we got to the hospital is was about 4 am...neither of us had gotten any sleep. We were admitted into the hospital where we waited for the hospital's pediatrician to come see Avery. Meanwhile, the nurses were trying to get an IV into her little hands and arms, after many attempts they finally decided to let her sleep and wait for the Dr. to get there. When the Dr. came in, he listened to her heart, and said "Has anyone ever told you that she has a heart murmur?" My first thought was "UH NO!" From there he decided to do an ultrasound of her kidneys to see if she had a kidney infection, her fever had gone down from medicine they had given her, but it kept coming back, so he thought she might have one. Luckily the results came back negative, we were very releived. For the next couple of days, we saw Avery's health improve. She began to come back and be her normal happy, curious self. I've never been more thankful for the power of the Preisthood and Preisthood blessings. Throughout all of this, she recieved two blessings promising a full recovery, that's all I held on to.

Since UTI's are pretty uncommon in babies Avery's age, her pediatrician and the other Dr.'s that saw her this week want to do a VSUG-- basically it's a test to see whether or not Avery's urine goes back up into her kidneys when she goes to the bathroom...they insert a catheder which has some sort of dye that is visable in an x-ray, it will show if urine is going into her kidneys, if that is happening, she may have to have surgery to reverse it...we pray that it doesn't go that far. Scott found a website about UTI's that said some kids just grow out of it without having to have surgery, so we might wait and see if the UTI's become a regular occurance before we decide on surgery. Anyway, our familes have been their usual supportive, helpful selves and we appreciate and love them and their love and concern for our little Avery! Both of our moms came and stayed with Avery so we could sleep and breathe some fresh air, we were feeling pretty cooped up after 3 days there!

We came home today and Avery has been amazing! She's had a hard time nursing, so we bought a breast pump until we can get her back to feeding more regular. She's smiley and happy...and much more comfortable! She'll be on antibiotics for 5 more days and then we'll see where to go from there.

Here's an ADORABLE clip of her giggly self..this proves to us that she's doing okay!