Rescheduled

Sometimes life with kids is unpredictable.

We were supposed to go to Birmingham this past weekend to go swimming.  Eli was supposed to have his 9 month well baby appointment this afternoon.  But all of that has been rescheduled.

Last Wednesday I went to get Eli up for the day and realized as soon as I touched him that he had a fever.  I yelled at Doug to get the thermometer and got a big, messy surprise when I changed Eli's diaper.  We decided that Doug would stay home with Eli on Wednesday, my sister would watch him on Thursday if needed, and worse case I would stay home on Friday.  We decided to wait to see how he did before we made an appointment with the doctor.

By lunch Eli's fever was up to 102.7 so we called and got an appointment for 1:30pm.  I met Doug there at 2pm.  His fever was at 103, even though Doug had given him some medicine.  He weighed 21.8 lbs and was 28.7 in. long (which is over an inch longer since the last time we measured him earlier this month!).  Our doctor was out of town but the Nurse Practitioner looked him over and told us that she felt like it was either viral or bacterial but wasn't sure which.  Since he was holding up pretty well she sent us home with instructions to call back on Thursday, if he was still running a high temp we would do blood work.

Wednesday night was rough, without much sleep for any of us and a high fever for Eli all through the night, so we knew we were going for blood work that day.  At first we decided that Doug would  go to work and then I would meet my sister for the blood work but when I changed Eli's diaper, I noticed what looked like blood in his poop and kind of freaked out.  Since I don't have much sick time, after using it all for maternity leave, Doug stayed home again.  I met him and Eli at the hospital lab for the blood work and a stool study (thankfully they took the full diaper we had from that morning rather than making us bring back a fresh sample) at 9am and then came back to work while they went home.  We had been told by the doctor's office that it wouldn't take long to get results and they would call us.  When we hadn't heard back at 1pm I called and asked them to call the lab since the lab hadn't called them.  Less than 15 minutes later they called me back and said to bring Eli in right then.  Well, that freaked me out so I called Doug and told him I would meet him there.  Before I could get there they had taken Eli back which only made me more nervous that something was really wrong.  Thankfully, that wasn't the case.  Eli tested positive for an overgrowth of a bacteria that lives in a person's bowels on a regular basis.  Apparently this bacteria only causes problems when it gets out of hand.  Our doctor said that most kids test positive for it but that the positive test combined with his symptoms meant we needed to treat it.  He gave us an antibiotic and we went home with our sick boy.  Thursday night was long again and Friday I spent most of the morning with Eli sleeping on my chest.  Because Eli was so sick they had me reschedule his well baby appointment, turns out he'll have his 9 month appointment on his 10 month birthday :)

Then around 2pm he just suddenly seemed better.  He played for almost 2 hours and the fever finally broke.  It was amazing the difference in just a matter of hours!  Since we knew it wouldn't be a good idea for Eli to go swimming we had already cancelled our trip to Birmingham.  When we woke up Saturday Eli still felt really good so we decided to meet my parents in Montgomery.  We had a great time shopping and Eli hardly slept more than an hour the entire day, I guess he was making up for all the sleeping he had done while he was sick!  We also had some 9 month pictures taken at Sears and while I was worried I wouldn't like "studio" photos, they came out really good.

Next weekend we'll be doing more photos outside and going to a wedding.  That is... if our plans don't get rescheduled.