Sick baby

It’s safe to say that there has been a lot of changes for our little family in the past few months. We graduated from college, had a baby, moved across the country, bought a house, and Jake started a new  job all within a few months. Whew.. I feel tired just thinking about it.

After shipping all our stuff to Atlanta and living out of our suitcases in our apartment for a week with our new baby, we flew to Atlanta on a Wednesday afternoon. We spent the next couple days trying to get somewhat settled and doing some minor work on our house. I hadn’t spent a lot of time taking care of Weston on my own and I was a little anxious about Jake starting work that Monday.

When I picked up Weston in the middle of the night on Sunday I noticed he felt unusually warm. I stumbled around the house looking through boxes trying to find our baby thermometer. When I finally did it looked like he had a slight fever but nothing too bad so I went back to sleep. The next afternoon I noticed he seemed really hot, so I took his temperature again and saw it was 100.9, so I called the doctor and made an appointment right away. On my way to the doctor’s office I got a call from the nurse who told me to go straight to the emergency room because a fever that high in an infant is pretty serious. She asked if I was ok to get him to the ER, and asked if I was alone. It really hit me that after 2 years of marriage and spending about 20 hours a day together, Jake was now working full time and I was alone and so far away from home. Through my tears I assured her I was ok. So poor Jake on his first day of work gets a frantic call from me telling him I need him to come with me to the ER.

When we arrived at the ER Weston's temperature had risen to 102.1 and they admitted him right away. He spent the next 7 hours or so at the emergency room while they poked and prodded our poor little boy. It was the worst kind of torture for a new mom to see the nurses trying and trying to get blood samples while I was holding his tiny little hand as he screamed through the pain.

The doctors informed us that they would have to transfer Weston by ambulance to the children’s hospital in Atlanta.I had a younger sister who died as a baby and seeing him in the transfer unit brought me right back to that time. It was so hard to be away from him knowing that he was uncomfortable and in pain. Through some of the tests they found that he had a UTI and needed to be treated with antibiotics by IV every few hours. Unfortunately his spinal tap to test for meningitis got contaminated so they thought for a while that he might have meningitis and had to treat him with extremely strong antibiotics.

So hard having to follow the ambulance with our baby in it

It was so hard holding my sweet little baby while the antibiotics filled his system. He was so uncomfortable and in pain that at times he would scream and cry for hours and nothing could console him. We spent a week in a little hospital room and Jake would come after work and leave early in the morning back to work. On top of that Weston could never get a good sleep because we constantly had nurses coming in to do tests (I’m still confused why they needed to wake us up at 2 am to measure how long he is.. am I right??). I was sleep deprived, completely overwhelmed, flooded with post baby hormones, and sick of seeing my little baby in pain. It was truly one of the hardest things I've been through. Thankfully after a late night call to my Mom, she flew out from Seattle and kept me sane.. literally may have lost my mind if it wasn't for her.

A foot IV after another vein collapsed

Something that I've come to learn is that sometimes life is hard, but it is those hard times that help us learn.  We had such great support from family and friends that really got us through. I had countless people telling me that they were praying for us. For the first time in my life I could literally feel the strength of all these people’s prayers in my behalf and I knew that my Heavenly Father knew me and blessed me with the peace that I so desperately needed and  for that I am grateful for this life lesson.