Blueberry Frog

After 2 days of being under house arrest, I was starting to go a little stir crazy. We watched enough Sesame Street that we were starting to turn red and talk in third person like Elmo. Now that I am an expert on pneumonia (I'm so weird like that) I learned a few things to help out with the recovery process. Thank you google for providing me with enough links to become pneumonia savvy. In my "research," I found that fresh air is good for pneumonic lungs, although not cold fresh air, warm fresh air. This is where living in SC comes in handy because today was 60, maybe felt like 56 or 57 with the wind, but that's not cold. So in my mind I thought we could definitely go outside. I was thinking about where to go though because I didn't want him running around.

A walk! Perfect! He is absolutely content in a stroller as long as it is moving and loves loves loves being outside. So a walk it is. In googling the heck out of pneumonia, I also found this word to come up quite often: Lactobacillus. Apparently it is also good for the prevention and treatment of respiratory illnesses. It's not only good for respiratory illnesses, it's also what helps the "good" bacteria in our system. With Lane being on antibiotics to help his infection, they unfortunately completely wipe out good bacteria and replace with bad bacteria. (Read:diarrhea) Pair that with no appetite and a hard time getting fluids down and that makes for a very dehydrated little man. I do not want that to happen!

So Lactobacillus is basically probiotics which are found in yogurt among other things. The Dr. recommended we buy these granules from the pharmacy and stick them in his drink to help get them in his system. He did fine with drinking yesterday so I was able to stick a few packs in his milk and water, but today is a different story.

I was remembering my conversation with Lisa Saturday night as we were walking downtown to dinner and we walked by this place called the blueberry frog. (If you take a look at the link click on nutritional information...it's a no brainer right! The blueberry frog is a frozen yogurt place, but not like ice cream frozen yogurt, actual frozen yogurt.) She was telling me it's frozen yogurt so I decided we would walk outside to get some fresh air to eat some yogurt. How can the child pass up what looks like and sorta tastes like ice cream!

So I bundled him up regardless of the warmer temps. and off we went. The blueberry frog is a good hike from our house. It is on the opposite end of downtown, kind of by the baseball stadium so it would take us probably 35-40 minutes one way, if we walked fast. But I figured we didn't really have anything else to do and it would make the hours pass by a little more quickly.

When we got there they had a few flavors-blueberry (awesome) pomegranate (tempting) and plain. I sampled the blueberry and figured that was the winner. They also have toppings so I chose fruit because it sounded so good and refreshing with the blueberry yogurt. So we got pineapple, blueberries (for the antioxidants, of course) and strawberries.

Let me just say it was delicious, a tad expensive, but totally worth it. But it was all Lane could do to take, oh maybe, 5 bites. He just couldn't handle anymore. His appetite is zip and not even a blueberry (which he calls grapes) or a pineapple could tempt him. So unlike him. Usually when eating blueberries he always saying "moe moe please." So needless to say I ended up eating the whole thing. He also thought he wanted out of his stroller, but he really didn't because after a few minutes of walking around he was gassed and wanted back in.

My little mechanical engineer

He was pretty proud he was drinking by himself.

I geared myself up for the long trek back. And as soon as we got home, he was asking to go nigh-nigh. It definitely wasn't a wasted trip. It just didn't achieve the goal I had in mind which was for him to eat and eat a lot of it. Although I do have a feeling I will be making several trips back to the blueberry frog.

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Mommy Instinct

Women are born with a natural intuition, it's hard to explain, but we all have it. After we have children it becomes our mommy instinct and it's never wrong so we shouldn't ignore it. I always push my mommy instinct to the back of my mind thinking I am overreacting. It is sometimes also clouded by other people or things, but it's there and it's real.

If I would have ignored or pushed aside my mommy instinct longer than 4:00 last night, we might have ended up in the hospital. Lane has pnemonia and thankfully we caught it in the early stages. Thankfully I no longer pushed aside my mommy instinct later than 4:00 yesterday and decided to call the Dr. They did not have any more appointments, but the nurse was kind enough to get us in at 6:50.

Our ped's office is open until 7 on weekdays and even Saturday mornings. We partly picked them for that reason and the fact that one of the Dr's was a mom of one of the 2nd graders where I taught when I was pregnant with Lane. She would come into volunteer and I knew she was a pediatrician so I asked her about her practice. And from there we decided Lane would go there. It's a practice of all women...I love that. And although we see the same Dr. for his well-checks, he has seen a few others at sick appointments. They are all wonderful women who are compassionate and caring and supportive and very thorough.

I ultimately decided to bring him in yesterday because of the fact that he seemed very agitated and uncomfortable. Rewind back to Saturday night. We went with our neighbors out to dinner and left all 3 kids at their house with their nanny. They set up the pnp for Lane and when it was time for bed she put him down. She said he cried a bit and it took him a long time to fall asleep. We got home from dinner and drinks at around 11:30 and stayed another hour talking with them and watching SNL. When I went to get Lane to put him in the car, he felt very warm to me. I chalked it up to being covered in blankets in a fleece sleeper in a hot room. When we got him home Matt rocked him a bit and put him down to sleep. We woke up Sunday for church and he seemed ok. We went to Panera for breakfast and then ran a few errands before returning home. By that point he was very tired.

When we got home I changed him back to his jammies and put him down for a nap. He slept a good 2 1/2 hours and woke up with a fever. It was a fever that felt higher than 100 so we took his temp. and it immediately spiked the thermometer to 103.3. Matt gave him some Tylenol and within a few hours brought it down to the 101 range. Before bed that evening is when my mommy instinct first appeared. I felt that his breathing was very labored plus the fever and on top of that he had a cough and runny nose for the past few days. I mentioned a few concerns to Matt and also looked up a few symptoms on the internet.

Monday he was still feverish, not 103 feverish though. And plus he never acted sick at all. Still running all over the house and playing. Not much of an appetite, but that's hit or miss lately anyway. Tuesday he woke up kind of cranky. I figured it was because he woke up at 7 and he usually sleeps until 8. So I tried to feed him breakfast. Wouldn't eat. I ended up putting him back down at 8:30 and he slept until 10. When he woke up I offered breakfast again. He would only eat bluberries. So we snacked on those, got dressed and off to the gym we went.

Yeah, not the Mom of the Year Award here. I figured I would get a quick workout in. It was 11 which is late for us and they are only there until 1. I dropped him off and when I picked him up he seemed to be playing. His nose was running so I wiped it and then he coughed and the one of the ladies said in passing "Lane has a cough." I was like "yeah he seems to get rid of a cold and then a week later he gets another one." (Little did I know his lungs were filled with fluid and he has pnemonia..doh! Insert forhead smack here) We came home and had lunch....well I did and he had some cheese and a banana.

I kept him up because our realtor was coming over to take pictures. He got here around 2 and I asked him to take Lane's room first so I could put him down. He did and I laid him down and he went right to sleep. An hour later, he woke up kinda half crying half moaning. I went upstairs because I thought it was way too early for him to be up already and he had his eyes closed. I just figured he was talking in his sleep. I went out to the garage and when the realtor left I came back upstairs to him crying.

I went into his room and knew he still looked tired. His eyes kept rolling back and closing. I tried to rock him and figured he would fall asleep within minutes. Nope. Could not get comfortable. Kept crying, moving his head around, scrunching his legs in and out. Just very uncomfortable. I thought it was my sweater so I took that off. Didn't help. After rocking for a while I brought him downstairs and he still barely had his eyes open. That's when I called the Dr. This was not normal behavior for him. He cried from about 3 until we got into the room at the Dr. which was about 7:00.

She came in and assumed he had an ear infection. She was talking to us about how common it is for a toddler between the ages of 17 months and 2 years to always have a runny nose/cold. She said it's partly due to teething and just the fact that their bodies are trying to regulate how to fight off infection. So when they get something their bodies respond by sending all the troops out (hence high fevers) and pulling back and sending out again. So she said perfectly common for his age to have a constant runny nose or cold after cold.

Anyway, she pulled out her stethoscope, by then he was laying motionless in my arms. Completely limp as a noodle. He had stopped crying, but was very lethargic. She listened and talked a little to us about infection and then she said "Lane has pneumonia." I think my eyes filled up with tears and my heart started racing. What! He went from having a cold for 4 days to having pneumonia! I tried to not cry in front of the pediatrician...that was embarassing, but I pulled it together. She said not to worry, it wasn't like your typical older person pneumonia and that at this point he will not need to be hospitalized. At this point, what!

She also diagnosed a left ear infection which was what was causing all of the discomfort. Pneumonia and an ear infection...great. I felt terrible, but she said we caught it in the earlier stages. Hence no hospitalization or breathing treatments and although both of those loom over us, we are hoping the antibiotics will help him heal and his little body will fight off the viral part of the pneumonia.

We went straight to Walgreens and got all his meds, immediately administered them when we got home. He also has ear drops for the pain, she told us to give him Motrin, and this packet (non-perscription) of stuff to put in his fluids that will help with loose stool because he currently has that and the meds will make it worse.

Please pray that Lane is able to fight this off and he will not need breathing treatments or hospitalization. Also pray that he is able to rest comfortably so his immune system can stay strong so he can fight off all of the infection. And also that he isn't in too much pain. Thank you!

He did rest last night. He only woke up once, but went right back down after I went up there and found his paci. He still has a low fever this morning and some discomfort in his ear that will hopefully be taken care of with his ear drops and Motrin.

I'll keep you all updated.

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