Thursday, January 19, 2012

Poor Baby Girl!

My sweet baby girl has a urinary tract and possible kidney infection! :-( I want to cry!!  

It all started overnight on Sunday.  She woke up around 1am, which is not normal for her.  I went in to check on her and realized she was burning up - so we started fever reducers and figured it was teething (she has yet to cut a tooth).  On Monday morning, she woke up shivering so I called her pediatrician wanting to be sure it was normal for a baby to get fever chills like that (it is).  She said to rotate Tylenol and Motrin and if the fever went above 102 to bring her in.  She never went above 102, but was extremely fussy and restless.  She would bat at her ears, and threw up a couple of times (both times we thought she gagged on something causing the vomiting).  She was also eating terribly and wouldn't let us put anything in her mouth.  You think, teething, right?  So did we.  So we waited out 3 nights of little sleep (I calculated that I got about 8 hours over three nights...Dan was looking at around 10-12 - maybe).  She would always sleep fairly well for the first few hours, but of course we weren't smart enough to go down with her.  Then she would wake up between 12-1, burning up and fussy.  I usually took this shift and fed her (if she would eat) and gave her baths to bring the fever down.  Then around 3am Dan would take over and rock her in the recliner.

Side Note:  Dan is thrilled to report that he has found a channel that plays all of his favorite childhood cartoons - GI Joe, Transformers, etc. - at 3am.

She had a pretty rough day on Tuesday, so I called to make her an appointment for Wednesday.  We felt like the best parents ever when we found out she had a unitary tract infection, not teething.  Fortunately our pediatrician is good about making you not feel like the worst parent in the world, and she said she wouldn't have tested for a UTI until the 3rd day of a fever anyway.  To test for a UTI in a baby, they put a catheter in...yes, a catheter in my baby girl.  It was tragic.  They made me hold her arms down and keep her upper body still while another nurse held her legs and a third nurse did the actual procedure.  Of course, the only person she can see is me, so she wonders what the heck I am doing to her (as I'm bawling...).  Apparently her culture came back positive pretty quickly, which means it's definitely a urinary tract infection.  Now we wait to find out if it's just a UTI or something more.  It could be a kidney infection.  Depending on the results of her lab, they may want to determine what is causing it (apparently the type of bacteria found in the culture can help them determine this).  It could be a fluke infection, it could be that she has a blockage in her urinary tract (something an ultrasound would reveal), or she could have a condition where her bladder doesn't fully empty so urine is backing up into her kidneys.  The latter two could require surgery to repair.  (Breathe in...breathe out...)  We'll know more after her labs come back (later today or tomorrow morning).

She was so listless and unresponsive last night it was scary.  Her fever spiked from 100.3 to 102.7 in about 20 minutes time...which caused her to start breathing really shallowly and fast, as well as sky-rocket her heart rate.  We called the pediatrician about that, and found out it's apparently normal.  The infection and the antibiotics are just battling it out in my little girl's body!  So the evening was a little scary, and restless.  I really thought we were in for another 1-2 hours of sleep night.  I sat rocking her to sleep praying...God, you gotta intervene here because I can't do it.  I'm so tired, and I'm at the end of myself.  I need grace to get through tonight...  He answered with grace in the form of SLEEP!!  She had a really good night last night where she slept for 3 4-hour stretches (it was heavenly!) and wasn't writhing and moaning like she had been.  But she's been back to that throughout today, and her fever has come back.  She starts the oral antibiotics today (she had a shot yesterday..yes, after having to hold my baby down for a catheter, I had to hold her down for a shot!), so I'm hoping they will help get rid of this thing!

We're believing God to fully heal her little body and that surgery will not be required for her.  Will you join us?

1 comment:

  1. Oh no! Poor sweet baby. Proud of you for listening to your mom's intuition. We are thinking of you all. Keep us posted.

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