a no good day

here is a terrible story that turned out fine. on sunday, when matt got up to change heath's diaper he thought he felt warm. he took his temperature and it was 101.9. the hospital and our doctor had both told us that if your baby had a fever you needed to go to the doctor right away. of course it was sunday, so our doctor's office wasn't open... so we called the nurse hotline and asked where we should go and they said (lucky us!) to the emergency room. so we went. and i thought they would see heath and realize he had no other symptoms and send us on our way and it would be an expensive, annoying little part of our day. not the case, friends. not the case.

when a baby who is under six weeks has a fever of over 100.7, it is routine procedure to get a urine sample, do a blood draw, and perform a lumbar puncture to collect spinal fluid. i just started immediately bawling. i almost wanted to tell them never mind and just walk right out of the hospital with him. of course i couldn't do that because what if something happened to him and i would have been forever guilty over it. so we took heath up to the nicu where they are better at  performing procedures on tiny little bodies. the nicu pediatrician came to talk to us about the procedure and explained that their big fear was spinal meningitis, which can just be really terrible, and that they were going to assume the worst until the baby and the test results could prove otherwise. 

this meant that heath would be hooked up to an iv and given intense antibiotics to treat meningitis. if the test results came back negative, he would be taken off the antibiotics and could go home. okay. reasonable. EXCEPT that the test results take THREE DAYS to come back. which meant that we were checking into the hospital for at least three days. then a british, male nurse named jim came in and took heath away to get a million terrible pokes in a sterile environment where i could not be. and matt took beckett outside to run around and i sat in an empty hospital room (our home for the next three days) and cried and cried. 

the inital spinal fluid reports came back a few hours later and looked "suspicious" and the doctor said she would not be surprised if he did have spinal meningitis and it was good we got him in so quickly and early. and then we waited three days for test results and it was terrible and boring and the saddest for heath and we all just wanted to go home and were dreading hearing that the tests were positive. if heath did have spinal meningitis the antibiotics needed to be administered through an iv for three weeks. yes! three weeks in the hospital. luckily (thank the lord) the tests came back negative and heath just had a virus.

in the long run, i'm sure this whole experience was more traumatizing on matt and i then it was on heath, who will never remember it. especially since from now on whenever either of my children have a temperature i will forever be paranoid that they have spinal meningitis because really, how do you know?! i hate it. i also hate the idea of families that spend months in the nicu with very sick babies. it must be the scariest... i can not imagine. i am so thankful though, that heath is fine and healthy and safe.

is your heart broken yet? it's just the worst.

headed home!

goodbye hospital germs!

sicky sick

beckett was SO sick for two weeks! blarg. the worst. even worse that for one week of it i was also sick. i maybe almost died because the stomach flu really makes you think you might not make it through. thank the lord that matt didn't get sick and could care for us. here are a million sick pictures of beckett... sorry i have nothing else to blog. we were confined the first half of the month, so... yeah.

happy easter

we had big plans for easter. our schedule was busy. step one was to wake up early and get ready and then play easter bunny before beckett got up. in my family growing up, we didn't get filled easter baskets. when we got up in the morning, we got an empty easter basket and everything was hidden, so you had to hunt for all your loot. i think that is a fun plan, so we are sticking with it. step two was to get beckett up, let him hunt and get him ready quicky quick. step three was go to church. three steps before 10am is kind of a big deal for our family. then i planned on going to the sigl girls' baptisms and to get some work done and then we were going to wrap up the day with an easter picnic at the park with the kreitlows. fun. it didn't happen. when we woke up beckett, he was not feeling well. we took him outside anyways, since i had hid everything... and he reluctantly picked up a few eggs and asked to go back inside. so sad. here are a bunch of pictures from the less than 10 minutes we spent outside. even more sad, this sickly behavior was just a foreshadowing of the sickie sickness that was about to strike and last all week long, and is still happening. the good news is, whether we got to celebrate it or not, jesus is still risen. so... phew for that!

new years eve

here you go... the moment you've been waiting for... naked new year's eve pictures. of beckett. obviously. i'm not a creep. i did this last year and now it can be a tradition. matt says it is going to get weird real fast, but i don't think so... i have like, at least three years left. anyways, you may notice in the photos below that beckett looks a little spottier than usual. that would be because of the chickenpox! oh yes, it's true. two weeks of itchy quarantine and we are on the mend. praise god that it appeared after christmas and before his birthday. we are surely thankful for that. here's to a wonderful 2013!

last new years eve beckett!

that time we almost died

last weekend everybody in our house got sick. it was terrible. it started with beckett puking in the car on thursday night and ended with saige getting sick back in eugene on saturday night. matt and i also got sick in there. matt is the most intense vomiter (new word!) you ever met in your life. he popped a bunch of blood vessels in his face, including one in his eye! everybody at his work thought he had been in a fight! it was also the first time beckett has gotten tummy sick and it was so sad. little ones are so confused about it. every time he would throw up he would look at us like, "what the heck?!" i still feel that way about it now... as an adult. so, the worst part about this whole entire sickness is that i was too, too sick to go to misty baker's baby shower. a shower that i helped host and had been planning for months. i almost gave whitney a stroke because she had to do so much work to pick up the slack. i am still upset over missing it. getting sick is so dumb and inconvenient. i hope we don't get hit with a bug like that again for at least twelve years. below is a link to pictures of the shower (it looked great... even without me) and even though i wasn't there to celebrate, i am so so so excited for all the baker babies and i WILL be there to hold them soon enough. also, some sicky beckett pictures are included. poor boy. 

the baker babies shower