Scary Night

After several snotty days (thanks, Piper), Graham spiked a fever of 101.5 late Saturday night. That may not sound all that high, but it is dangerously so for a newborn. After consulting with Graham's pediatrician, he and I headed to the ER at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital. Josh stayed home with Piper.

We were admitted around 12:30 Sunday morning. The nurses took blood and urine samples to look for infection and swabbed Graham's nose to test for RSV and the flu. After all of those tests came back inconclusive for the cause of the fever, the doctor had to perform a spinal tap to rule out any bacteria in his spinal fluid. That, too, didn't show anything.

They gave him a blanket dosage of an antibiotic and, since his fever had come down with Tylenol, sent us home at 5:00 am. He had his last dose of Tylenol at 9:00 am Sunday morning and has been fever free since.

Per orders from the ER doc, I took Graham to the pediatrician first thing this morning for a recheck. Aside from still being a little snotty, he is fine. The pedi told me that if Graham had been just a few days younger, he would have had a mandatory three-day stay in the hospital for monitoring. I'm so glad we avoided that. His fever was more than likely due to a viral infection, the same one that was making him do snotty.

I didn't allow myself to think about what all could happen to Graham's little body because of this infection. It was and is too scary to dwell upon. The hardest part of the whole ordeal was having to go through it without Josh there with me. Hopefully we will not get stuck between a rock and a hard place like this again.

We are so thankful that Graham's body is on the mend. But we aren't looking forward to telling Piper that she can't love on her baby brother "Bam" the next time she's under the weather.