Baily's Hospital Stay

The past 3 days have been filled with a whilwind of emotions! Sunday night, around 11pm, Baily started running a tempature of 102 degrees. Way too high for a baby that is only 5 1/2 weeks old! I called the doctor to see how much medicine to give her and they said I need to get to the ER as soon as possible. So after I gathered a few things for the big girls we were off. Mama dropped Emily and Kaitlynn off at Jay Mac's and met us at the ER. Baily's temp. there was 101.5 so they proceeded to run tests. They need urine and blood samples. This was hard to aquire since Baily was so small and dehydrated from the fever. After 3 needle sticks they were able to get some blood, however they soon came back to inform us that the blood had clotted before they got it to the lab so they would have to stick her again. This time it took them twice to get blood. Poor Baily 5 needle sticks and a cath. The first test they did on the blood came back okay, but they thought they needed to rule out Menangitus (SP?) so they said they would have to do a Spinal Tap :( I could not believe this! They tried twice, unsuccessfully, in the ER to do the spinal tap and decided that they would admit us and let another doctor try again upstairs. Finally at 7am, after a very long stay in the ER, they were able to get us a room on the 2nd floor in the pediatric wing. It took Dr. Martin 2 more tries before she was able to get the spinal fluid she need to grow a culture. They had to put in another cath. and start an IV for fluids to hydrate her and for antibiotics. At that point we were up to 12 needle sticks in our baby girl :( So after this horrible night and morning everyone one was sleep deprived and emotionally drained. Baily was not eating well and could not rest at all! This made for an extremely long, long day. We had so many people call and visit and pray for our sweet baby girl. Thanks so much to each of you! The 24 hour culture tested showed there was not any bacteria growing, our first good news in about 36 hours! The IV fluids were beginning to hydrate her, however she was still running fever (not as high, between 99.7 & 100.9 degrees), and still not eating well and very cranky. Around 6pm on Tuesday Baily was finally able to rest for about 1 1/2 hours and things started to turn the corner in a good direction. Then about 8pm her IV site went bad, vein collapsed or clotted they were not sure, so we had to put another IV in. It took them 2 times before they were able to get this IV started :( That made a total of 14 needle pokes :( :( :( Tuesday night went much better and Baily was able to rest for 2-3 hours at a time and was eating much better! Around 11am we recieved the wonderful news that the spinal tap came back negative! They said that if the blood and urine cultures came back negative we could go home!!!!! So at around 1pm on Wednesday the best news came that we were getting to go home!! Of course it took until 3:30pm for them to discharge us, but finally around 4:00pm we were at home with all three girls asleep! Baily was a little chranky in the evening, but once she finally went to sleep she slept most of the night, only waking up once to eat and then go back to sleep! God truly blessed us by watching over our sweet little Baily Caroline! We give him all the credit! Thanks so much to everyone for their care, concern, calls, visits and especially their prayers! Baily is getting back to her old (6 weeks old) self! Just wish she did not have to go through all of that trama but thankful that she will not remember it! Will post some pictures of our hospital stay soon.