Night Night, Baby, Night Night

Zarik's li'l Mini-Me is getting so big!! He's officially 7 months old now!



I still carry him in his sling and beco most of the time, but when Mika decides to walk, sometimes I'll give myself a break and pop him into the stroller.

As much as we like to get out and walk, we haven't been able to much lately. Urijah had another bout of bronchiolitis. The pediatrician we saw when I took him back in echoed our normal pediatrician that this is probably caused by RSV. She said that unfortunately because of that, most likely every time in the next year or so that Urijah gets sick he'll relapse into the hacking, wheezing baby boy we've come to know. We have his (late) 6 month appointment in two weeks here, so I'm going to talk to the pediatrician about what we can do to prevent it from getting too bad.

Urijah's been sleeping a lot because of being sick. Twice in the last 3 days I've set him down to play only to find him like this 10 minutes later:



Rest well, baby boy!

He Takes After His Daddy

Urijah has been coughing since Monday. It started just as a mild chest cold with a small temperature (never above 101.3). But as the week wore on, no matter what we did, his cough kept getting worse. Even though his temperature was gone by Wednesday night, by Thursday night he was having a tough time breathing and everything was making him cough. Thankfully he slept OK at night (I would get up once or twice and give him a dropper of water when he would cough really bad). By Thursday afternoon even Zarik was saying we should take him into the Dr. So today (Friday) we did.

Turns out our poor baby has Bronchiolitis and an Ear Infection. I was actually kind of surprised.

You see, with Mika it seemed like every time she got kinda bad we'd take her in and be told "It's just a virus. She'll be over it soon." We did get close to taking her to the hospital for an illness once but she that was a flu-like virus. She has never had an Ear Infection or actually needed an inhaler/nebulizer. (She was given an inhaler once, but it turned out to be the wrong treatment for what was going on).

All that to say, I was kinda surprised that Urijah actually had something more than "just a virus" and needs actual treatment for it. Since the Ear Infection isn't really that bad, we aren't doing antibiotics yet, but have a script for them if it comes to that. We did get ear drops to help with the pain, though. And for the bronchiolitis, we were given a nebulizer.

As for the title of my post: Zarik is thrilled about the nebulizer because now he can use it when he gets sick! You see, whenever Zarik gets sick, it goes straight to his lungs and he ends up coughing for like 3 weeks. So it seems that Urijah takes after his dad.

An eventful week.....

Well, it all started with Zarik FINALLY going to work again. He went on a four day trip that had LOTS of overnight time in Chicago. With an all women crew. Hehe!! Poor guy. He got home Wednesday night.

Thursday, due to an series of unfortunate events, Sierra, one of our huskys, got out and gave Zarik a good run through the Safeway parking lot, in and out of stores and everything. He decided then and there to shave her neck and put our shock collar on her. We just needed new batteries from WalMart.

Friday, we woke up to go to WalMart, went downstairs to go to the car, and found our bottom floor flooded. Zarik did a little damage control then we left. After we came home, he went to clean it up better and figure out what the problem was. He came upstairs a few hours later to tell me that while he didn't know exactly what was wrong, he knew what the flood was - it was sewage. Flooded all over. Great. We quickly figure out that ANY water poured down any drain, or any toilet flushed makes it back up, so we have to stop using all water and toilets. And I'd had a very productive day and was halfway through boiling and washing cloth diapers, and cleaning the kitchen top to bottom, including 2 loads of dishes. All that came to a grinding halt. The night ended with Mike throwing up all over me, and us having to leave 2 blankets and all our clothes stinking up the laundry room.

Saturday, Zarik was able to get a hold of a sewer and drain guy who rushed up and fixed what was a clog in our sewer line. Yeah!!!! And it only cost $120 on a Saturday! God is Good! Needless to say, we spent the rest of that day SCRUBBING.

Sunday about 3am, Zarik woke up throwing up. We now knew that Mika's throw up incident wasn't random: it was the flu. Poor Zarik spend all day in bed aching and feeling downright miserable. The worst part was that Zarik hadn't really had any time with his baby girl in a week and they were both missing it.

Monday morning, I woke up throwing up. Thank God Zarik was feeling better. It was JUST the 24 hour flu. So he got to spend that much desired time with Mika while I lay in bed aching and trying to rest.

Today, Tuesday, we are finally all doing much better. The carpet still needs some work from our "sewer" incedent, we are about 4 days behind on chores and such, and we still have NO energy, but we realize it could have been a LOT worse. I just hope our lives get a little more eventful between now and the time Urijah comes.....

Not just sick....

Mika and I have been fighting colds since this weekend. It started with her getting a BUNCH of milk down the wrong pipe Friday morning. She was still coughing a really barky cough by Monday, so I called the pediatrician just to make sure they didn't think it was anything serious. She said it sounds like a cold and that the milk aspiration just aggravated the chest/cough part of it. Mika's been acting really good through all of this. She has woken up a couple times per night, but puts herself back to bed.

Well then yesterday she found some dog hair or paper on the floor and put it in her mouth. I went to fish it out (unfortunately I wasn't fast enough - darn belly, lol!) and found something totally unexpected....

HER FIRST TOOTH!!!

WHOOHOO!!!

So it turns out her symptoms are doing double time - teething and a real cold. (I know it's real cause there is NO WAY she doesn't have a little bit of what I have - I'm dying here!!)



The cold mornings have started here....

OH, and Mika is all better

The dr thinks that the virus' were all mutations of the same thing. The flu thing turned into the resperatory thing which tried to become a sinus infection, that went into an incubation period for 2 days, which then started draining and became a really bad sore/hoarse throat. *sigh* We've finally recovered, though. Now we're back to working on eating solids! Not Mika's favorite thing...

Mika has another virus

That's about all there is to say. That's 3 in 3 weeks. I miss my friends.

A long two weeks

Well, the sickies still have not left our house. With the lack of sleep and Mika being so sick, either Zarik or I was bound to get sick, and Zarik was the unlucky one. (Or was I, since I now got to take care of two sickies, lol?) Mika has gone through the flu-like virus, a resperatory virus, and now has a sore throat and is hoarse as all get out, poor baby. Zarik caught her resperatory virus and it went straight to his lungs, so he's been coughing a lot. And I woke up yesterday coughing and today have a mild sore throat. *Sigh* Hopefully we're at the end of it all though. The really sucky thing was we had to go to a funeral in California int he middle of all this. My cousin Shawn, who was 46 years old, had an aortic anyerism and passed away suddenly. So what should have been a joyous celebration of long life (we were supposed to have my grandmother's 90th birthday party) turned into a funeral. The trip went well, despite the nature of it, and we did get to enjoy fellowship with family. And we had a really yummy strawberry-filled cake for grandma at the reception.

Now we are just taking it easy and trying to recover from all this. Lots of prayers that everyone else out there is staying healthy!

Dr. appointments galore! Mika Update...

So today we (Mika and I) had some Dr appointments.

Today was originally schedualed for a reflux/prevacid check. It turned into a sickness update/reflux check. The flu poor Mika had is turning into a resperatory thing (so a cold) and I guess it's fairly common for it to do that. The pedi thinks the coughing will culminate Sat/Sun, and there may be more vomiting associated with it because of all the draining mucus and the coughing. That should be lovely, as we'll be in Cali then for a funeral. I can start giving her half-strength formula again today. She just had 2 oz w/half a scoop and some pedialyte/white grape juice to chase it down.

As far as the reflux goes, because of the vomiting plateau (even when everything else was getting better she was vomiting) and the fact that she didn't do her gaspy thing until 4 days off the prevacid (she wasn't keeping it down, why bother giving it to her) We are pretty darn sure it's reflux. Basically, with any illness reflux is aggravated and that's probably why she plateaued. So we're on the prevacid until her 9m appt and then we'll re-evaluate her, probably take her off for a couple weeks to see how she is, and if she hasn't grown out of it we'll go to a GI dr. I'm also going to start giving her acidopholus (doing research on this now) to help heal her body/give her body a break so she has a better chance of growing out of this in a month and a couple of weeks.

The shirt says it all


Our little "almost" crawler!

Worse than a fever (some TMI)

Unfortunately, the fever was just the beginning. Saturday morning we woke up to Mika vomiting all over herself and the bed. Three times. And a diaper full of diarrhea. We were going to take her back to the Dr, and we were going to get there right before they closed, but we got a flat tire on the way. So I called and talked to a nurse while Zarik changed the tire. We started her on pedialyte, gave her small amounts of of bananas and rice cereal (the baby BRAT diet) and waited about 16 hours before trying formula again. She did OK until about 4 in the morning, then threw up again. Luckily her fever was gone by this point. We continued Sunday and Monday to do just pedialyte during the day with some solids, and try formula at night. She started refusing the pedialyte and continued to throw up the formula. Tuesday I called the Dr since I was concerned she was still throwing up and now refusing the pedialyte almost completely. We saw her at 1:30. Mika was on the low end of dehydration, so she told us to try plain pedialyte with white grape juice, or really watered down Gatorade if she wouldn't take that. So far she likes the Gatorade. We were going to have to go to the hospital for IV fluids if she didn't drink 6oz or have a wet diaper by 8pm. Well, no wet diaper, but she did drink, so the Dr told us we'd watch her overnight, and if there was vomiting or no wet diaper by morning, to call and we may have to go in. Her diaper was soaked, which was awesome. Unfortunately, she had a coughing fit after having about 1 1/2 oz of Gatorade at 6am and that made her throw up. The dr said just to continue to watch her since it was the coughing that caused it, and if the coughing gets worse and keeps causing her to vomit, we'd have to bring her back in. Right now Mika is taking a nap and Zarik and I are trying to rest. It's been a loooooong weekend.

Mika's first fever :(

So my poor li'l girl got her first fever today. She woke up a few times last night coughing, but I think that was just because silly Mommy forgot to fill up the humidifier - oops!! She was a little fussy at the beginning of Bible Study, which was weird, then while I was talking for a few minutes, one of the gals held Mika and when she gave her back, said Mika felt hot. Now, Mika is a hot baby, period. She and Zarik (whom she gets her hot-bloodedness from) can't cuddle for more than a few minutes before they are both overheated and sweating bullets. But I noticed her eyes looked a little glassier than normal, too. So I took her temp when we got home, and sure 'nough, it was 102.3!!! So a call was made to the dr, who wanted to see her. So I drove 50 minutes to the north office (we normally go to the south office, but they were closed for the day) only to have her fever down to 99.7. Everything else looked good, so the dr gave me some things to watch out for, how to treat it, etc. Really, nothing The Baby Book by Dr Sears didn't already tell me. Then it was 45 minutes back home. *sigh*

Oh, and after checking in, I had to hand Mika to the receptionist and go toss my cookies. Gotta love morning - I mean all day - sickness. *double sigh*