June-July-August 2010

Hospital Time

Monday night was the first of what I imagine will be various scarey moments as a mommy. I was giving Aaron his last bottle and he sat kind of limp in my arms. His hands were cold (they had been cold all day) but they started to turn a purplish color and all of a sudden he started trembling, almost like convulsions.

"Ruben, come look at this," I said, trying to stay calm. Ruben should have been at work that night but stayed at home because of the massive snow storm that hit Catalunya that day. He joined me in Aaron´s room and we noticed that his forehead was really hot. I pulled out the cute "Tiny Tikes" pacifier thermometer to check Aaron´s temperature.

As he sucked and sucked I watched the numbers go up and up and up. His temperature reached 104ºF! I gave him some baby paracetemol but we knew this wasn´t a "wait it out" kind of moment. We had to do something quickly. Speechless, we dropped everything, loaded up the stroller and packed into the car to head to the emergency room.

The good thing about the snow is that there were no cars on the road and almost no patients the emergency room. They were able to see us right away and determined within a couple hours that he had a urinary tract infection. Of course, during those two hours they had to stick him with an IV and a catheter. Poor little guy. Also while we were there he turned purple and his fever went up again. Although it wasn´t pretty, it was good for the doctor to be able to see it first hand.

They decided to check him into the hospital and we headed to a hospital room around 1am.

They started him on antibiotics and he behaved so well! He´s such a trooper. The doctor even said that many babies in his condition cry and complain non-stop and that he was a model child to handle things so well.

Not By the Book

The last few days have been so frustrating! I´ve been following the latest thoughts regarding schedules for babies....eat, waketime then sleep. But what happens when there´s a kink in the plans?


I´m learning that I do REALLY well with structure...but I kind of fall apart when the structure stops working or gets out of whack.

In December Aaron caught a virus (adenovirus) and battled 3 solid weeks of diarrhea. 


He recovered from the diarrhea but hasn´t gone back to his normal eating habits since then. He was eating very well before. Now, it´s a battle to get him to take half his bottle at each feeding. Although he shows signs of hunger and a desire to eat, when I pull the bottle near he cries and arches his back and refuses it. He rarely eats the total amount he should by the end of the day. 


I´m going to weigh him this afternoon to see how the week has gone. Last week he had gained weight, in spite of the resistance. We´ll see how it goes today. 


There are several possible issues contributing to this....sore gums as he´s working on entry of the first teeth, some kind of allergy, acid reflux. Who knows...time will tell.