What a way to celebrate being 2 months old

Yesterday, the girls turned 8 weeks old, and Carter decided to celebrate it in the emergency room. Will had a bit of a cold the last couple of weeks, and Ellis and I caught it and ended up with a really nasty cold. I was watching the girls closely and trying really hard to prevent spreading germs to them.

Monday, Carter kept getting more and more congested. But I thought she would be okay, left her in Daddy's care for her 12:00 feeding so that I could try and catch some zzs to get over this cold. At about 1AM (and maybe an hour of sleep), I heard Carter crying hard and Ellis told me she was running a temp. I took her rectal temp and, sure enough, she had a 100.9 fever. I called the pediatrician, and they confirmed my fear - this was a true emergency because of her age and told me to get her to the ER right away.

Carter and I were in the ER of the Children's Hospital from 2-7AM where she was poked and prodded so much. The fear with infants this young is that they do not necessarily present symptoms associated with dangerous illnesses like pneumonia or meningitis like older children or adults. So, even though the fever is likely caused by a virus, you have to run a gamut of tests to make sure that is all it is. She was poked with an IV (it took 3 pricks to get one in), blood was drawn, urine was taken with a catheter, chest x-rays were taken and they even had to do a spinal tap. Her blood sugar started to drop as she went through the trauma and started to lose her color which really scared me. That's when Mommy called time out. I think the ER doc could see that I was about to lose it because suddenly everyone left and he quietly came and checked on me while I fed Carter and just quietly held her from about 5:30am to 7:30am.

She was admitted to the hospital yesterday morning where she and I are now. 2/3 of my heart are at home where I worry about Catie and miss Will terribly. All the tests came back okay for Ms. Carter and now we are really just waiting for the spinal and urine cultures to be completed. Her doctor just came in this morning and let me know that, if nothing grows in the cultures and she does not have another fever, then we should be discharged tomorrow morning.

Its been a rough haul for us since the day I was admitted to the hospital for the girls' birthday. With Ellis's mom's stroke and the girls' issues, we realized that there has only been one week since March 30 that we did not have a close family member in the hospital. But we have a whole lot to be thankful for - despite their premature birth the girls are doing fine, despite her high temperature Carter appears to be doing fine, and Ellis' mom was discharged from rehabilitation on Monday and is now living with his sister's family to continue her therapy.