Your turned a month old a few weeks ago...yes a few weeks ago. I'm just now getting around to writing this post and it's not because I'm slacking since you're the second child and all. I really do have a good excuse! We were in the hospital with you for 10 days and actually celebrated your one month birthday in the hospital.
Just before you turned one month, a week before actually, you got a fever and weren't really eating to well. Since you were so little we decided to call our doctor just to see if we needed to do anything or if it'd run it's course. After explaining your symptoms (fever, not eating, and fussiness) he said to bring you in immediately. We weren't really worried at that moment, we thought he just wanted to check you out just to make sure you were okay and then maybe he'd prescribe some medicine. Oh boy, were we wrong! After the doc looked you over and checked your temperature numerous times (temp 101.7) he left the room and then came back and said we needed to go to the Pediatrics Ward that they were expecting us. Because of how old you were they needed to do a full work-up (spinal tap, blood drawn, urine sample) and said we may get admitted for up to 48 hours.
Again, it really hadn't hit us yet and we thought they just wanted to take a look at you and run some tests. But once we got in our room and nurses swarmed around you we started to get worried. I had to leave the room with your brother while they did the spinal tap. I can't stand watching my babies be in pain so Daddy stepped up and hung out with you while I played with your brother in the other room. Daddy said the spinal tap went well but they had to do it twice. Darn it! Then they drew some blood and had to do that twice too. They also had to put an IV in and a catheter to get a urine sample. They weren't sure what you had at this point yet but thought it was meningitis. So they immediately started you on two kinds of IV antibiotics.
Later that night we got some test results back which is one of the red flags for meningitis. Your white blood cell count was abnormally high, you should only have 5-8 white blood cells and you had 280. Full blown meningitis is 1000 so that made them believe you had an early case of meningitis. But your other tests came back negative and after two days in the hospital nothing had grown on your culture which is a definite confirmation of bacterial meningitis. Even though nothing grew on your culture and all the other tests were negative they decided you needed to stay in the hospital for 10 days since your white blood count was so high. They wanted you to be on antibiotics the full 10 days and the only way to do that was stay in the hospital. After the full five days your culture still came back negative for bacterial meningitis. So they couldn't give us a definite diagnosis of what you had but said it was either an early case of bacterial meningitis or group B strep. They also couldn't tell us where you got it as it could have come from anywhere. They said not to even think about it because we'd drive ourselves nuts thinking about it.
All and all, we survived the 10 days in the hospital. We had wonderful doctors and nurses looking after you which made our stay so much easier. Daddy couldn't stay with us at the hospital since he had to work every day so I was very thankful for a little extra help from the nurses here and there!
Since leaving the hospital you're doing really well and are pretty much back to your old self. Thank the lord!! Though you did get spoiled in the hospital being held all the time that you've had to learn to soothe yourself on your own. Well you're still learning but you're only a month old so we'll get there! While we were in the hospital you seemed to change overnight. You grew out of your newborn clothes for one and gained a whole pound while we were there. The last weight check they did said you were right about 10 lbs. Oh boy! You eat like a horse so that didn't surprise me. I can't keep up with you breastfeeding so we started giving you formula too. You do about 50/50 between the two.
Happy One Month birthday sweet sweet little boy! We're so glad everything went as well as it did and your back to your smiling self.
Love,
Momma
P.S. Here are some more pictures I had to share!
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