Baby drama

We've had a long week. A looong week. Molly has been sick AND is getting her top 2 teeth. She's had her fair share of colds in the past, but this time was different. I knew she wasn't feeling well Wednesday morning--she had been coughing and just seemed under the weather. We took her to daycare, but they called that afternoon and thought she probably needed to go to the doctor. She was wheezing a little and seemed to be having some trouble catching her breath. I called our pediatrician's office and the first appointment I could get was an after hours appointment at 8:15pm.

Jason was nervous and decided to leave work early and get her home. She slept most of the afternoon and wouldn't finish her bottle. By the time I got home around 6pm, we knew something was really wrong. Molly was crying and wheezing and just seemed so miserable that we weren't sure we could wait until 8:15. She was pretty warm so we took her temp and it was 102! Jason called the doctor and I got some Tylenol in her and we tried to be patient waiting for a call back.

It probably only took about 5 minutes to get that call, but it felt like an eternity. The nurse had me count Molly's breaths per minute and when we discovered her respiratory rate was 90 (normal for a baby is 30-60), she told us we needed to take her to the ER. AAAAAAHHHHHH! Panic. Jason got Molly's coat on and threw her in the carseat and I ran to put on sweats and get the diaper bag packed up. A minute later we were on the road and heading to Children's Hospital in Lincoln Park.

I can't even explain how scary it was. Molly was breathing so fast and was SO serious. We could tell she was scared too. But then while we were waiting in the triage line, she spotted a little boy in the waiting room and started smiling at him. That was the moment we knew everything would be okay.

She had to breathe through a mask for a few minutes (this was torture -- Molly screamed the entire time and turned as red as a tomato) and then they came in with a tube and sucked all the stuff out of her nose (this was probably even worse, but I didn't watch) and then 4 hours later, they sent us on our way home with a diagnosis of bronchiolitis.

Jason and I both stayed home on Thurs and Fri to nurse our poor baby back to health. She was pretty pathetic for a couple of days and wouldn't let us put her down. Unfortunately both Jason and I were slammed with work and still needed to get a few things done to keep our jobs going. I'm not sure I've ever been so stressed. All I wanted to do was take care of my baby, but my supervisor was out of the office and so was my back-up, so there was no one else to do the work. Ugh! Somehow I managed to get the essentials taken care of. And then I will need to play catch-up today while Molly naps. But the worst is behind us.

Molly started playing again today. She's still tired and she still isn't eating as much as she should, but she's on her way back to normal. Here's the proof: