our first christmas as a family

amori's first christmas = first time she got sick.

she had a 38F fever at 6pm of the 24th, so i gave her Tylenol which thankfully worked after an hour or so. we immediately called the BC Nurse Hotline and they said that it would be better if we went to the hospital to have her assessed. so we brought her to St. Paul's and the doctor there said it must just be a virus, and that it is quite common this time of year for children to get different bugs. we went home, had dinner, and opened gifts.

mom, it's way past my bedtime. let me sleep!!!

by 3am amori was whimpering and trembling in her sleep. not long after, her temperature shot up to 39-40F, which got aldo and i really worried because it didn't seem to be nothing to be worried about. another dose of Tylenol later, her temperature went down but the whole cycle of trembling and burning up happened again at 7am.

we then called our family doctor and she said it would be best to take her to the BC Children's Hospital - at least it was a whole hospital full of pediatricians there. to our surprise, there were a lot of sick kids on christmas day! it was sad though to see parents and kids waiting to be treated on what was supposed to be a day for kids.

after routine questions were answered and vital signs taken, the nurse told us that they had to take a urine sample from amori - because she had no other symptoms like cough or colds, just fever, so doctors wanted to make sure they ruled out all possibilities. apparently for babies they have a tiny pee bag with band-aid-like adhesives that they put on her. when they did get a sample and tested it, the sample was positive for urinary tract infection. ack!

they wanted to make sure it was really UTI so they wanted a sterile sample - this time directly from the bladder thru a catheter. yikes. i had only experienced a catheter once and i didn't feel it because of the epidural but for a baby... oh no. aldo couldn't take it and left the room when it was time to get the 2nd sample, and he was right in doing that because it was excruciating to see amori in that much pain. to make matters worse, the nurse had to do it twice because she couldn't get the darn thing in the first time.

the tests came back positive so at least we now know where the fever is coming from - thank God! she's on oral antibiotics now so we're learning the delicate art of giving medicine to a baby.

but nothing can stop christmas... aldo was determined to give his daughter a good first christmas so even if we both looked like crap and amori was in her thickest pajamas, we still went to her grandparents' house where Santa left a lot of gifts. our poor little munchkin was really not herself so she just stared at the gifts and christmas decor - if she were well she would have been grabbing things left and right, and swimming in all the giftwrappers.



i cannot even begin to describe how difficult and painful it is to see amori sick. it's like you want to cry along with her, but at the same time you have to keep a straight head because you have to know what to do to make her better. her having an infection made me feel guilty too since i do most of the diaper changes. the doctor though was nice and said that babies can get it from wearing diapers alone or getting the bacteria thru other means like sucking on dirty hands or toys. aldo and i think it's largely because we switched diaper brands recently, so we're reverting to good old pampers again.

with all the ER trips, we didn't have nice christmas pictures... and to think i'd already picked out her christmas outfits. at least she's a lot better now. after the first dose of antibiotics, there was no more fever and she was back to her old self.

oh and she officially swallowed 5 tiny spoonfuls of rice cereal today! (we'd been trying for 3 days and she only put it in her mouth and drizzle it out after a minute.) solid food, here we come!

happy holidays!