Recheck

Today's appointment went well... aside from the hour long wait that is becoming standard with every pediatrician appointment. I really don't understand how they can be an hour behind at 10 in the morning when their first appointment is at 8:30.

Doc said Cassidy looked better as soon as she saw her. She still hears a faint "crackling" when she breaths, but said she didn't know if she would have heard it if she wasn't specifically listening for that specific sign of pneumonia... it was that faint.

Cassidy hasn't had a fever since tuesday evening, and she seems to be feeling better most of the time. She has been waking up coughing at night though, and seems to have a sore throat based on the grimace she makes every time she coughs. She hasn't been eating well, but only lost 1/2 ounce since tuesday.

While keeping her home, we've been putting her down for 3 naps a day. They've been shorter than usual for the most part, but she seems to need that third nap to rest and recover from the activities in between. As she approaches nap time, she gets fussier and more irritable than usual. Yesterday afternoon, she was playing with a ball that I had put into a cup for her. Every time the ball fell out of the cup, she started to cry. :(

I didn't have the heart to record that, but I did get some cute playtime video...

Pneumonia...

is the diagnosis.

X-rays today showed the beginning of pneuomonia at the bottom of her left lung.
Starting tomorrow on a strong antibiotic to prevent or treat any bacterial pneumonia. Continuing breathing treatments 3 times a day and back to the doctor for a recheck on Friday.

Doc said she likely isn't contagious, so at least I don't feel bad about sending her to daycare today.

We're keeping her home the rest of the week though, in the interest of maximizing the amount of rest she gets, making sure her breathing treatments are done properly, and watching her closely for any worsening of symptoms.

Members of the "those" parents club

Well, we are officially "those" parents. We sent Cassidy to daycare this morning. We ended up giving her just that one dose of tylenol last night, she slept the whole night (I, of course, was up every 1-2 hours checking to see if she was still breathing), and this morning she had no fever and was acting perfectly normal.

So I'm planning to pick her up early for her doctor appointment, but somewhat expecting a call to get her earlier if she starts to run a fever again.

More guilt.

Another Kind of Guilt...

Cassidy's sick. Again.
On Friday evening she started with a dry, painful sounding cough.

Saturday morning she woke up and sounded just horrible - Cough, congestion, hoarse voice. We took her in to see the on call doctor, who diagnosed the normal "viral bronchitis" with instructions to increase her breathing treatments to 3 times a day again, and see our normal doctor monday or tuesday. She wasn't acting sick at all, just congested.

Sunday morning she was running a low grade fever, but it was back down to normal by mid- morning, and she still wasn't acting sick. All smiles most of the day, with the occasional cough, sounding wheezy, but better than saturday.

Today she was at daycare all day, and a bit "irritable" as they described it; but she ate well and played all day. I thought she felt warm when we got home, but her temperature was normal. By 7:00, she was wheezing, whining, fussing, not eating her solids, and running a temperature of 101.0. She still nursed well and took her bottle. We've dosed her with tylenol, Jeff is doing her breathing treatment right now, and we're putting her to bed early hoping for a full night's sleep, but not really expecting it.

Every time she gets sick, I wonder if I'm doing the right thing by working. I wonder if she would still have all these breathing issues and colds if she wasn't in daycare. Every time she coughs or wheezes, I feel guilty, like I'm a bad mom.

Yet I also already feel guilty that I won't be working a full day tomorrow since she shouldn't go to daycare within 24 hours of running a fever. I'll likely try to go in early, set up an experiment, come home to watch Cassidy until her doctor's appointment at 3:30, and go back to work after Jeff gets home to finish up my work. I don't feel guilty about being unproductive anymore while at work ... even though my experiments aren't working all the time, I feel that I work hard most days. It's more the time away from work that I stress about... even if it's when I'm sick.

How do I find some sense of balance as a working mom? Is it even possible? Will I feel this torn for the next 4 years, until she's in school during the day?

Anything for the Remote...

Cassidy LOVES the remote control. She knows it controls the tv. (This is ironic since we really watch very little tv with her). All we have to do is pick it up and she'll look up at the tv to see what will happen. We bought her her own remote control that speaks 3 languages and makes funny noises, but she knows it's not the real thing.

The other night she saw that we put the remote down on the couch and that was all the motivation she needed. She pulled herself up for the first time, just long enough to get the remote and sit back down. (I have to admit that we recreated the situation for this video, but it actually is an exact repeat of what happened the first time).

The following night, Cassidy "told" us she wanted to take a bath. She crawled into the bathroom on her own, pulled herself up on the edge of the tub, and reached in. So we stripped her down, put her in the bath, and watch her really "play" in the tub for the first time. She splashed, crawled back and forth, and enjoyed holding her hand under the running water.

I'm absolutely amazed at how quickly she's developing. She seems a bit behind in some of her milestones (speech) and way ahead in others (she's been playing ball with us for months now). I'm still using some signs when I talk to her, and it's clear she knows what some of them mean (when I make the sign for cat, she looks around for him), but she hasn't started signing herself, other than waving bye-bye. I'm enjoying every little new thing she does ... everything amazes me.

She's got a top tooth coming through right now and she's handling it like a champ, one or two bad nights among many, many good. We have a new routine now that she's been getting fussy earlier in the evenings. We usually take a walk after dinner around 7:30 or 8 and she falls asleep. She wakes up when we get home, we get her ready for bed, read her favorite book -the only one she'll sit and listen to, actually (Baby Einstein's Mirror Me), nurse, bottle, and nebulize, and she's asleep by 9 or 9:30. She's consistently sleeping through the night (though I'll probably regret writing this here 'cause it'll jinx it). We usually wake up to some babbling or fussing sometime between 6:30 and 7:30. This past weekend, she spoiled us, letting us sleep until 8:45 on saturday and 8:30 on sunday! I joke that she must have figured out early on that we are much nicer people when she sleeps well :)

Cassidy's breathing seems better since our visit to the pulmonologist, which set us on the 2 week course of oral steroids and once a day nebulizing. She's gotten a bit of a stuffy nose occasionally since then, but it didn't seem to move into her lungs like before. Hopefully we're well on the road to recovery.

And She's Off....

Last Friday, when we dropped Cassidy off at daycare in the morning, she was crawling in short bursts, never going very far. When we picked her up, they told us she was crawling everywhere! And they weren't kidding. When we got home, she took off and she's continued to improve her skills all weekend.

We installed another baby gate between the kitchen and living room to keep Cassidy and the dogs in or out and relocated the dog food and water bowl.

Building Immunity... We Can't Catch a Break.

Last week tuesday I came down with the flu, or a really bad cold, with a temperature of 102.4 for 1 day, and another day of a low grade fever. I missed 3 days of work all together, but went in on Friday and Saturday to catch up on what I was working on.

On Sunday morning, Jeff got sick with what we thought was food poisoning, including stomach cramps and throwing up. By Monday morning he was feeling better.

On Tuesday night, we found out that Jeff's food poisoning was in fact some type of stomach virus when I started having stomach cramps. I got it way worse than he did. By 9pm I was throwing up and spent the night on the bathroom floor until 4am, when I dragged myself to the bed. I missed another day of work on Wednesday recovering.

Thank goodness for my mom, who was visiting for the week and helped take care of Cassidy during all of this. So far, mom and Cassidy have dodged whatever stomach bug this was. I suspect that Cassidy had whatever I had last week but didn't run a fever with it because she was particularly fussy and tired, with ominous green stuff coming out of her eyes and nose (again ... she had been off the the gentamycin eye drops for green stuff coming from her eyes for all of 4 days.)

We really manage okay on our own down here without family around most of the time, as long as there are two of us. But wow, when one of us is out of the game for a bit, we realize how much work Cassidy is (and she's an easy baby!!!!), how much we depend on each other, and we appreciate each other even more.

Cassidy's On the Move

Over the past week, Cassidy has gone from making it up onto her knees once in awhile, to rocking back and forth, and now to crawling. She usually doesn't go far, but she definitely is no longer in the same place we left her when we leave the room for a moment or even look away.

She seems to get frustrated that she can't move faster, and she still has to concentrate very hard when she's crawling. She still seems to prefer to stand while holding our hands and walk wherever her little feet seem to take her.

The baby-proofing will continue this weekend with electrical outlet covers and de-cluttering anything within her reach.