Sick Baby

I haven't posted since Sunday because I've been in the hospital all week with Alex. Monday evening he came down with a fever. In babies younger than 3 months, any fever means a trip to the emergency room, mainly to rule out or treat for life-threatening meningitis. I had a friend who's baby had no other symptoms than a 100.7 fever and ended up with the worst case meningitis. Fortunately she had a hunch, acted fast, and they caught it before there was any apparent damage to his hearing or brain. Because of her experience, I acted fast and my pediatrician sent me to Bryn Mawr's ER at 11:00 at night.

They tortured my poor sick baby, taking blood, cathaterizing him, chest x-ray, even a spinal tap. Then I sat in a hard back chair with nothing to eat till 4am when they finally had a room ready in the pediatrics wing for us. After another hour of answering the same questions for the third time and hooking Alex up to monitors and IVs, I finally fell asleep for an hour or two in the tiny cot in his room.

I stayed by his side all through Tuesday, Wednesday and half of Thursday before they let us go and chalked it up to some unknown virus. He's still not quite himself, but he's on the mend. I'm just happy not to be surrounded by those same four walls anymore. It's pretty tough to sleep in a hospital, even when you're not the one who's sick. Because I'm breastfeeding, they did a good job of trying to keep me fed and tended to. The nurses were absolutely fantastic and the doctors were not bad either.

We decided to head up to Mike's parents place again this weekend because the Penn State game is on the Big Ten network which is not carried by Comcast, and they have a dish. Priorities, you know.