What a month we've had!

When Daniel was born we had no idea what was in store for the poor little guy. Shortly after the last post his eye started swelling where they thought he had a blocked duct. It quickly went from a little to bad, to worse, to flat out nasty. We decided Sunday evening that we should go ahead and take him to the Children's ER in a neighboring city b/c he was borderline running a fever and we figured it was just a matter of time (not to mention his eye had started to swell shut). By the time we were admitted to the ER his eye was completely swollen shut. Because he was so young they said that he was going to have to be tested from head to toe - blood, urine, spinal fluid, etc. At that point it was pretty obvious he had an infection and evidently newborns aren't able to contain infection like someone older can. We were also told that he was going to have to stay for at least 48 hours until they knew what kind of infection it was so they could properly treat it. He ended up with a higher than average white cell count in his spinal fluid so meningitis was a possibility which was scary. By the time we were admitted his eye was oozing - talk about nasty! All that happened in a matter of hours. They started him on a cocktail of antibiotics to knock out whatever it was, thankfully he responded well to them. While we were there I pushed to have an ENT come in since we were there after everything that had happened the week before. They came in but couldn't do much since the infection was still there and they didn't want it to spread (our first indication of the infection starting was a neon yellow nasal discharge on that side). At this point we were hoping the breathing issues were related to what we now suspect was a cyst that got infected. Thankfully we were finally able to go home and his eye has been given a clean bill of health! As bad as it looked then, there isn't any residual signs of what happened.

Fast forward to our ENT follow up and his breathing had taken a turn for the worse. I recorded some of his snoring/snorting/squeaking noises to show the doctor b/c I knew it going to be near impossible to explain them to her. She scoped him down to his vocal cords in the office (so weird to see!) and no signs of any structural issues so they were thinking it was just some residual swelling from birth (could take up to 6 weeks I guess) and also most likely some reflux issues. She put him on some steroid drops to take down the swelling and reflux medicine. She also placed an order for home health care to come out with a monitor for overnight to see if maybe he had some apnea spells going on. A couple days later I had messages from both the doctor and the home health supplier saying there were further orders. Of course I couldn't get through to the doctor's office but was told he needed to be on oxygen! What!?!? Come to find out his oxygen levels had dropped to 60 overnight! So now he needs oxygen whenever he is asleep which he is of course thrilled about (note the sarcasm). They did another round of monitoring last night to see if it's doing what it needs to, but they just picked up the monitor so it'll be at least tomorrow before we hear anything. I do think whatever it is is getting worse b/c last night as soon as he fell asleep he would drop to 90 within a minute or two. I just wish we had more definitive answers at this point...

As all this is going on he also started having blood in his diapers along with a lot of mucous. The doctor suspects it's a dairy allergy, especially with the history with the other kids but b/c of all he's been through she's a bit paranoid there might be more to it. I had to take a stool sample by the hospital which was thankfully negative for CDiff. Since cutting dairy out of my diet he has improved quite a bit though so I am really hoping that's all it is and we can avoid yet another specialist.

Anyway... that's our first 5 weeks with little man in a nutshell. It's been a whirlwind to say the least! As of Monday at his 1 month checkup he was a whopping 13 lbs 2.5 ozs - off the charts!!! The only other child that has ever been close to off the charts was Joah, but it was the bottom range :( All I know is this boy is solid - whew!

Some sibling love :)

An oxygen machine... yippee...

His preferred way of wearing the cannula :P

His eye right before we left fr the ER.

Not even 12 hours later... as you can see, he's mad at the world.

Such a sweet smile.

The joys of country living - walking the cow path.

D's first fishing trip.

And of course my goofball...

Messy medicing - blech!

I love sleeping babies :)

Dancing with their build-a-bear animals.

I have been surprised at how attentive Lillian is with him - a little jealousy at times, but not as bad as I was anticipating! The stethoscope is a souvenir from the second hospital stay.