So it's been a month since I've posted and most of you know by now that sweet baby Evelyn Jane Fanning made her appearance into this world two weeks early, which meant no pain meds for me during delivery (major, major ouchie). She'll be three weeks old on Saturday and I've been meaning to finish drafting her birth story and write posts about the lack of sleep, challenges of rearing two children, breastfeeding woes and triumphs, etc. But all of that will have to wait because it turns out baby E has RSV. RSV. I can't believe it. I've been so paranoid about her getting sick (with an older child in the house, it's almost impossible to stop the onslaught of germs that aren't there when you only have one baby), and now she gets the big whammy of baby illnesses. At less than three weeks old.
If you aren't familiar w/ RSV, it's basically a respiratory infection that kids under three are very suseptible to. In adults, it's generallly just a cold, but in babies, especially babies this young, it can be bad. It can turn into pneumonia and if accompanied by a fever, it generally means hospitalization in an infant this young. I noticed baby E was having a hard time nursing last night (sounded congested, was making snorting sounds out of her mouth) and again this morning, so I took her to the doctor. I was shocked when the RSV test came back positive. Her pediatrician wants us to come back tomorrow and monitor her very closely and if anything changes (more congestion or difficulty breathing, difficulty eating, appearance of a fever), Evelyn will be the winner of a trip to the Dell Children's Hospital. We will be doing breathing treatments every three hours to help her little lungs. Hopefully this will go away on it's own in one to two weeks.
So there you have it. Not quite three weeks old and already sick. I feel like a horrible parent. And I hate this time of year (flu and cold season). People, have your babies in the summer when there are less germs. Makes life easier.
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