Week 133 motherhood – RSV, another hospital visit, postpartum endo visit

Concentrating on wooden puzzles

Week 133 of motherhood with a 2.5 year old and 3.5 month old:

March 30: Today started in the worst way possible. Last night, we all were able to get to bed and sleep early for once at 10pm. The baby predictably work up around 1am for a feed but the way she cried woke me straight up. It was a wheezing kind of cry and cough. I hit DH awake immediately (which was odd since he usually hears her and is already up before me) and I told him she was crying weirdly. He heard it too. We got her up to change her diaper and she still had the wheezing cry/cough. Immediately, I was afraid she might have trouble breathing and I told him so. We knew we had to go to the ER so we quickly threw on our clothes, put her in the car seat, and left the house. While DH was getting ready, I did manage to capture a video of her wheezing cough on camera.
I found it miraculous that she wasn’t crying for food right after being changed. Usually, that’s what she does. She was fine and looking at us in the car seat before we left the house too.
The 10-minute drive to the hospital felt like a long time. It was 1 am and there were no cars on the road, but it still felt like forever. I had to make sure she was okay by shining my flashlight on my camera near her every so often to make sure she was breathing and okay. She was awake and blinking her eyes. (Again, I was surprised that she wasn’t crying for food and didn’t even fall asleep yet.)
We parked, got out all our stuff, entered the Emergency doors, entered our info into the kiosk, received a waiting number. There was no one else there in the waiting room. Within a few minutes, our number, 175, was called. The nurse told us to strip the baby naked so they could weigh her. We did so on one of the stretchers. Baby didn’t weigh as heavy as she does when we weigh her at home, only 5.77 kg. The nurse then tried to get her vitals like her oxygen by wrapping the corded device around her feet. She said the baby’s appendages are so short and she kept moving and that it was going “to take forever” lol. But she was a sweet young nurse and very tender and kind and meant nothing ill with that comment.
She kept holding down the device and pressing into the baby’s foot but the readings still weren’t steady. She kindly explained to us what she was trying to do and that the waves in the readings needed to be stable before it could be finalized.
Finally, it was done. Her oxygen levels was at 98%, which was normal. (One of the other nurses helped us register into the system while we were waiting this whole time. She was also very nice and understanding that we had an infant and wanted to save us some waiting time.)
Once we were done, we waited in the hallway chairs to be called in. Once called in, the doctor came to see us. I explained quickly what was going on and upon checking her chest, he confirmed that she was definitely wheezing. Wow, so quick. He told us to go down the hallway to get an xray of her chest and then return back to the partitioned off triage area.
Having just chatted with a friend the other day about kids getting sick, I knew that the xray meant they wanted to see if she had pneumonia. We waited in the xray waiting room. There was nobody else there and I was paranoid that the staff wouldn’t even know we were there and we’d waiting for a long time. DH said this was where he waited the last two times he had been here too and that eventually someone would come and get us. He was right. We waited maybe 5 minutes (but it felt long since I was uncertain if anybody was coming at all).
The xray technician set up the big scary looking xray device inside the dimly lit room. DH held her down and I was asked to leave the room. They took two xrays of her, one of the chest front on and one sideways. DH said she didn’t cry at all.
We went back to the triage room and within minutes, DH was asked to speak with the doctor — just him. She didn’t have pneumonia (thank goodness). But they took a swab of her nose to check for COVID and other viruses. They also gave her a syringe of dexamethasone which the doctor explained earlier would help open up her little airways since it was likely bacteria blocking them and causing the wheezing.
The baby was such a champ. She didn’t squirm or cry during the swab and ate up the medication like it was candy lol. This girl is so funny when it comes to this stuff (remember when I wrote that she gobbled up her two-month oral vaccination like it was candy too?).
We were told to go to the PUCC for a checkup the next day. And then we could leave and go home. Before leaving, I asked the doctor if there was anything I needed to be alert of. He said feed and do things normally. The only things to watch out for would be a fever (to be taken anally for accuracy) or worsening breathing.
By 3 am, we were home (we were out for two hours in total). She did fall asleep in the car seat this time. I still found it miraculous that during the entire two hours, she didn’t cry or scream for milk AT ALL. At home, she would be screaming and hollering for milk right after a diaper change. I guess she knew she wasn’t feeling well and we were at the hospital for a reason. Big kudos to this little girl for behaving so, so well during the entire 2-hour ordeal — all the waiting, the attempts to read her oxygen levels, waiting for the doctor, the xray, the results, the swabs, the meds. Just wow.
I fed her once she got home and she passed out relatively quickly afterwards.
The next day, the results came back in the morning. I saw the report which said she was negative for COVID and other things but tested positive for Respiratory Syncytial Virus, RSV, the most common childhood respiratory virus during the winter months and the thing that clogged up pediatric hospital beds during the early autumn months. Sigh.
The doctor called me later to inform me about the results (good thing I saw the report before he called so I already knew what was going on). He said there were no drugs or antibiotics for it and that she’d have to ride it out. I asked him about my 2.5 year old and whether I should bring her into the hospital to get her checked out too. He said the toddler most probably has RSV too because siblings interact in the same household, but since there’s no antibiotics for it anyway, she should just stay home to rest and recover.
And so that was that. I myself still have a cough and a bit of a headache. It was such a long day too since it was DH’s first day back to work in the office so it was only me and grandma. She looked after the toddler the whole day. It turned out to be a really hard day as the toddler rebelled against everything. After breakfast in the kitchen, all she wanted to do was stay in grandma’s room to play and sleep. She refused to change her diapers, only wanting DH to do it, and ended up soiling the covers on grandma’s bed :(. We even tried to do a video call with DH, but it didn’t work. She had big crocodile tears fall from her puffy red eyes and was absolutely inconsolable.
We had to inform our friends and family about postponing our 100-day celebration for the baby which was supposed to happen this weekend. Sigh, but it needed to be done since RSV is contagious and we all need to get better too.
DH has some throat irritation and says his throat is dry. I continue to have throat irritation and coughs too. We all are wearing masks inside the house. Hopefully grandma holds strong too and doesn’t catch RSV either. 🤞
March 31: Poor baby’s voice is all raw and scratched up from all the coughing and crying :(. It took her two hours to get her to fall asleep last night for some reason :(. DH and I were so tired from passing her back and forth between us. She is soooo heavy now like a potato sack. Even DH finds her heavy to hold for long periods of time.
I fed her so many times yesterday to keep her hydrated. My tracker showed 5.5 hours of latch-on time 😭. That’s a record. I was feeding her every hour basically. But it’s worth it because she is unwell and needs my milk and antibodies.
With that amount of latching, I also produced 555ml of breastmilk from my haakaa — the most I’ve pumped out this time postpartum.
It’s so heartbreaking this morning to hear her little voice so raw and tired from all the crying that she’s been doing :(. Poor girl. Only three months old and already having to battle with the RSV :(.
The toddler is back to being more like herself today. Yay. She is still not 100% yet though. Still some coughs and lethargic.
Apr 3: It’s been a rough three days… The day after we had the baby diagnosed with RSV, we had a followup appointment the next day at the PUCC. It was surreal to have to go back there since she was born at that hospital and we were there almost every day after her birth when monitoring her jaundice levels. It was like old stomping grounds though and we knew where we had to go.
The nurse kindly took her temperature rectally and asked us a few questions about her feeding and diapers. Baby was happy and smiling. She was 37 degrees. The nurse described her, “Wow, you’re sick but such a happy baby!”
We then waited for the doctor who came in with a medical student. The doctor went through a quick background of her birth and then checked her and provided us information about RSV and what to expect in the next few days. The nurse already prefaced this info by telling us that RSV peaks at the fourth or fifth day, to which I was crestfallen about. There was more to come. But the doctor said the baby looked hydrated and good despite sick and has a mild case of RSV. She said some babies who are really sick look a lot worse. She told us to look out for fever (38 degrees or more) or if she has trouble breathing. Bb did well during the whole wait time and examination again, bless her little heart.
Away home we went again.
That night, an unfortunate accident happened where the baby fell off the bed while in an adult’s arms and her forehead hit the bedroom floor. I was in the washroom at the time so I didn’t see the fall, but I heard the bump and the subsequent cries. 😦 Baby’s voice was hoarse and raw from coughing and crying, but I could still hear the pain in her voice. DH shushed her and she was okay and didn’t cry again. There was no bump on her forehead. I fed her as normal and then she slept.
She slept for a 5-hour stretch that morning and DH was a little concerned that she had slept so much. The forehead now had a red mark on it but she seemed okay. Despite this, we called Telehealth for advice. It took a while for the nurse to call us back where after assessing the situation over the phone, she advised us to visit the ER just in case because she’s so young.
Thus, we rushed out the door again to the ER for the second time.
It was a Saturday and it was really busy at the hospital. We were the 5th person waiting for our number to be called into triage. We contemplated asking to be seen earlier since we had a three-month-old, but things were moving well and we were called to triage after about 13 minutes of waiting.
The male nurse asked us for the reason of visit and we said the baby fell off the bed. He had us put her on the scale (didn’t need us to strip her down), took her temperature rectally, and then took her oxygen just like the other two nurses did the past two days. He was more successful and faster in getting a reading. Her oxygen level was like 99%.
We waited in the hallway with many others to be called into the ambulatory area to be seen by a doctor. We waited probably 30 minutes before a nurse came by to do a pre-assessment on us as well as a young elementary school aged boy. I was getting anxious for the baby because the baby’s last feed was at 10:30am and it was already past 1pm. (The TeleHealth nurse told us to go to the hospital and refrain from feeding her.) The nurse assessed the baby by talking to her and making her laugh. She seemed okay. She told us she didn’t know how long the wait would be since the area was packed with people. I asked her about whether it’d be okay to feed the baby and she said the baby looked fine and provided us a private room. This was amazing. The room as well ventilated, had multiple sofas and side tables. We were inside for about half an hour where I nursed her on both sides to make sure she was full enough before we joined the hallway seating again.
The private room was so great to break up the waiting time. We only had to wait about 15 minutes more once we were back in the hallway.
We were called to triage room 8. We waited a bit more before the doctor came to assess her. He was straight to the point, no fuss — it really must have been a busy hectic day for him. He said good thing we had waited to come in because had we come into the ER the night prior when the accident happened, they would have advised us to wait anyway. A small head injury like this takes time for any symptoms to occur, if there are to be any. He said it’s been more than 12 hours with no vomiting and she appears fine, neck moving, limbs moving, so she should be fine going forward too. She is so little that a CT scan would have too much radiation for her to be worth it. The bruise on her forehead had completely faded by this point too. He told us to go home and keep an eye on her if she develops a fever or starts vomiting violently. I also mentioned to him she has RSV, but he waved that diagnosis off because I guess it wasn’t relevant (but I would think so because if she develops a fever, it could be related to the RSV instead of the head injury 🤷‍♀️).
So relieved that we got a medical professional to see her. Thinking that she was slow to react that morning and her making extra bubbles in her mouth were just overthinking on my part.
I did notice she didn’t nurse for as long periods though and she was taking in milk at smaller quantities, but that could be related to the RSV (sore throat maybe?).
The toddler was out of control and tantrumming so hard that night. She wanted cow’s milk in the middle of the night, but we don’t give that at night anymore. She cried so hard and was off the charts. Eventually she did settle down and sleep, but it took a lot of frustration on everyone’s part.
At 3am ish when the baby woke for her feed, she felt unusually warm to me and I was afraid she had a fever. It took us a while, after using the ear thermometer (not accurate anyway), to then use the digital one in her rectum to find out her temp was 37.4. Phew. We almost rushed out the house to make another trip to the ER if she really was fevering. Good thing she wasn’t. The digital thermometer is an older one that takes a few minutes to produce a result. Baby girl was so patient with us as we held her down and watched the numbers on the digital screen ascend all the way to 99.4. She wasn’t taking in much milk as she stopped at the 3 to 4 minute mark each session. She also was pooping lots. She had 3 soiled diapers in a row in the span of 45 minutes the night prior.
DH went to Walmart to get a faster working thermometer the next day during his lunch break. We got the Vicks speedread thermometer which works orally, rectally, and axillary and produces the temperature in only 8 seconds. Amazing. We used it on bb and she was 36.9, right on normal temps. Phew. Her temps was coming down as she pooped more. There were some watery stools too, just like the ones that the toddler had the other day (and me too — never went to the washroom so many times to expel before). We surmised it must be the virus working through the body and being expelled. However, I was reading online and RSV isn’t a gastrointestinal virus, so why does it affect the intestines/guts like this?
We can’t even hear her cry “lai” as usual because her voice is still raw and not back to normal yet. 😦 So heartbreaking.
The toddler is still coughing today but back to regular eating and playing at least.
I sat down to play with her to give her some 100% undivided attention today. I haven’t been able to do this in a while because I’m either always feeding myself or nursing the baby. Even today, I had to sacrifice some immediate baby-nursing and shower time in order to make the play time happen. The toddler needs more of this attention from me in order to stop acting out. Once her cup has been full, then she is more peaceful, and easier to manage and negotiate with.
I also had my postpartum visit with the endocrinologist today to speak about my glucose sugar results. I thought he was going to tell me I was prediabetic, but it turns out I interpreted the results incorrectly! Yay! He said my results looked great and everything is normal. I’m not prediabetic!!! My glucose levels after the drink was 6.1, which was under the prediabetic marker of 7.8 and also way under the diabetic marker of 11.0. 🥳🥳 (I can throw out my sharps container to the hazardous waste depot!!)
He told me I will have an increased risk of getting GDM again with any other subsequent pregnancies and repeated the advice for me from last time: get back to postpartum weight within a year (did it already — lost 5 lbs so far but need to maintain and keep it off), walk 10,000 steps five times a week (working on that. Did it last last week, but this week I have been recovering from the cold and haven’t been walking), and to incorporate fiber and decrease fats in every meal. He also said to begin the GD diet once pregnancy begins. It’s a good diet anyway.
So, so happy to hear I’m not prediabetic at all! Woohoo! 😀
When driving home from the postpartum appointment with the endocrinologist today, I was reminded of how I enjoy car rides alone (when traffic is not stressful). I can listen to my favourite radio station and even sing along when I know the song. It’s a certain joy.
Baby continues to smile when we talk to her. She likes initiating them actually. What a social child! We can see the differences in personality between the secondborn and firstborn so clearly. We are even joking to each other that this secondborn might rise up and be the more dominant, braver one.
I had a slight clog/hard part in my right breast from all the short nursing sessions that the baby has been having today. She wasn’t nursing enough for the flow to be smooth to cause some milk blockage. Eventually, I got her to feed more in that side and she resolved the blockage. Thank goodness for direct chestfeeding. This clog would never have resolved itself so quickly if I was pumping. All hail nursing > pumping!
Although the baby can wear size 2 diapers now, we have a box of size 1s still that we prefer to finish up. Thus, back in size 1s for now.
When sitting with the toddler after dinner again to play, she took out the shape sorter herself to play with. Once done, she returned it back to the shelf.
Then she took out the wooden puzzles to play with. It was actually my first time playing with her with these puzzles since we bought it (from Dollarama). I was amazed that she could fit the puzzles together herself. She needed help from DH before. Now, she can do it herself without help!
Goals for the toddler and us to enforce these things: eat more during the day so she doesn’t wake up at night asking for milk, brush teeth thoroughly (especially her top row of teeth), potty train.
Last week, accidentally showed the toddler a video of a “meow meow” cat song (from Cocomelon) and now she’s been asking for it in lieu of the thank you song. DH says the cat song is so catchy and hypnotic that it’s almost like brainwashing.. actively going to use my phone less around her so she won’t keep asking me for it. We don’t want her to look at screens so often. It’s not good for her eyesight and not good for her attention span.
Somehow remembered the PC game “The waitress”, searched it up on my phone, and been playing it the past couple of days. It’s so fun. I love time management games :D.
My cold symptoms started from being a cough and headache to then coughs to then some phlegm in the cough to being a stuffy nose with lots of transparent mucus.
DH’s sickness started off some with throat irritation. Then he was losing his voice. And then the sniffles, stuffed nose, and mucus came. I have never seen him so unwell with a cold before.
When the baby coughs, she has mucus/phlegm. But she is unable to cough it out 😦 Good thing that when she coughs when sleeping, she can actually fall back asleep.
Apr 4: Forgot to post that two weeks ago, the toddler started to sing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” by herself!! She knew basically all the lyrics and the tune. I was so impressed! We didn’t even sing this one much for her but she remembered it.
The one she kept asking me to sing for her was “If you’re happy and you know it” and she would clap alongside the song.