Do I look like I spent the day at Children's Hospital?

This is not exactly the look of a child who spend the weekend with a high fever and most of Sunday at Children's Hospital, but it is!

Friday evening EK started running a low grade fever. She cut her first tooth (yeah!) last week and several of the kids at day care were sniffly so I figured it was either teething or a cold. Well, by Saturday am the fever was up to 101.7 and by Sat evening 102.7. She was so warm and lethargic all day Saturday that I compared her to a warm gummy bear. I knew something was wrong when she wanted to cuddle-- she's not a cuddler! I'd been on the phone with the pediatrician (thanks Rachel!) all day and she said just keep pushing the Tylenol/Motrin rotation and watch the fluids. So I did, and by Sunday am her temp was 103.4! Call me an over protective first time mom, but I headed on over to Children's with that one. Anyway, they pretty much assumed it was a virus, but decided to run some tests: urine, blood, and chest x-rays. All of these tests were made impossibly harder than usual by little things like: she had that urine bag on for 3 hrs and never peed! I had to run her hand under cold water and finally we got a "sample." 2) couldn't find a good vein for the blood tests. When they did find one it didn't give enough blood so they still had to prick her finger and "milk" it for more blood to test. 3) new students couldn't even manage to get her temp taken-- one time it even took 3 tries! 4) blood pressure cuff never would read accurately. Not to mention that every time she was moved she screamed-- even to change her diaper. Scream Scream Scream. So, 5.5 hrs and a gazillion pokes, prods, blood lettings, urine collections, and pictures of the inside of her lungs later we got a definite answer: big fat UTI. She got a big bolus shot of the antibiotic Keflex , some more Tylenol, and lots of printouts on what to do next. Even with all that hassle I'm glad we went on rather than waiting another day with those high temps.

Now the challenge is getting her to take her meds. She will not take any liquid meds-- spits 'em right out. She'll even hold her breath and then spit it out. We've tried forcing her, to no avail-- all it does is make her really really mad. We even resorted to Fever All, perhaps the greatest infant medicine ever created. If you haven't used it, click on the link. It brought her fever down almost instantly, thank goodness!!! This afternoon, after several wasted attempts, I finally got her to take her antibiotics by mixing it with some yogurt. I tried mixing it with oatmeal, applesauce, and spoon feeding nothing worked until the yogurt. I guess we'll be doing that twice a day for the next ten days. Geez!

Sorry, no pictures from the hospital, but here are some of her playing that night. It was amazing how much better she felt once that fever broke.


We were all exhausted and were so very happy when she started yawning. She slept great all night, what a relief. Chris and I are still catching up on our sleep, so on that note.... G'nite!