It has been snowing since 1:41 am. How, you wonder, do I know that this is the time it started snowing, well….I was awake folding laundry and nursing a sick child. Yes, Lucy is sick and not sleeping well(that’s putting it mildly). Three of our kiddos and I have some sort of a runny nose head congestion thing; but Lucy is just miserable and not her normal mostly happy sometimes cranky little self. Instead she is mostly cranky and sometimes happy. She started acting “off “on Wednesday morning, by Wednesday night she was down right miserable with a fever, head congestion, and runny nose. The poor thing could not suck on her binky she was so congested, feel bad for her but feel worse for the rest of us who have live with her not being able to suck her bink. Thursday morning she woke up(I use the phrase woke up very loosely)and had a 96 degree temperature, autonomic dysfunction is such a baffling thing one hour she is higher than normal and the next hour she is lower than normal . She was obviously miserable with a thick runny nose and drooling because her oral motor tone was lower than normal, in general Lucy becomes even more hypotonic when she is sick.
(Gross, I know but as a result of her having a runny nose she has discovered her nose holes:)
By Thursday night she was really struggling to swallow, she kept aspirating her saliva. She would wake every twenty minutes or so coughing from aspiration. We had already elevated her crib mattresses in an effort to help with her congestion, but honestly we did not know what to do for her aspiration problem. She and I slept on and off in the rocking chair in the nursery, but it didn’t really help the problem. She was happier though just being in my arms.
Friday morning we had therapy and I could tell that she was acting even more “off”, although she did not have a fever she was struggling to balance and drooling even more. My mothering instinct kicked in and I called our pediatrician who said bring her in, we can never be too cautious when it comes to Lucy. I know I’ve mentioned this before but it deserves mentioning again, we are so grateful for our pediatrician and her staff. Without them I do not believe that we would have diagnosed Lucy as soon as we did. She trusts my mothering instinct and listens to all our our concerns, trust me when I say this is not a common every day occurrence in the medical world. Lucy is dealing with some sort of infection, my instinct was right again but I was still hoping she would tell me that it was just viral. Lucy has thick green drainage in the back of her throat and with her aspiration issue the fear is that she could aspirate this green stuff and get another pneumonia. She put Lucy on an antibiotic and said to call if anything changes. Praise antibiotics! Lucy slept better, not great but better, last night than she did the nights before. Although she is still cranky and not her usual, her nose is not dripping green stuff any more. She is exhausted, and so am I.
As I write this it is still snowing. We have been snowed in all day and we looked at this as an opportunity to have some holiday fun. We baked and decorated some of the most vibrant sugar cookies I have ever seen (see photo below).
The kids had fun doing it, and we the parents are still wiping off frosting and vacuuming up colored sugar from our kitchen floor and every where else they walked. Drew attempted to shovel a path on our driveway just in case of an emergency, lets just hope we have no emergencies tonight as the snow is piled up nearly two feet in some areas. Jack, Megan, and Sophie played out in the snow for a short period of time today, I think that Sophie broke the record for shortest duration. After taking longer than twenty minutes to get dressed to go outside, she was back inside crying in less than five minutes. You gotta love her, or else you’ll loose your mind.
Here’s hoping that Lucy sleeps better tonight, feels better tomorrow, that the snow tapers off so the kids can play outside a little longer tomorrow, and that Drew and that we can shovel out from all of this snow.
