Just This Good: Jacob sickie poos

I don't think Sofia caught her first cold until she was almost a year old. And even then, she had the sniffles for a few days and was back to normal rather quickly. Since then she's been ill maybe once or twice a year. Same kind of deal, a little fever, a runny nose and then she's good after a day or two. She never really complains about being sick even when she is. She must have inherited Adam's immune system. That man is never sick.

Jacob is the exact opposite. Poor little thing. It seems like he has been sick at least once a month since October. The past few times have been awful. He caught these colds where he just looked downright miserable. A ton of congestion, coughing, super tired, lethargic. Unfortunately I know there isn't much you can do for a cold. It just has to run it's course. So we make Jacob as comfy as possible, keep the humidifier going, give him some honey when he's coughing, slather on the baby Vapo-rub, and give him as many hugs and kisses as we can. I am hoping that this is somewhat of a phase and he will eventually grow out of it in the next year or so and that he's not going to be a sickly child. He had a rough start, especially with his lungs, so I'm not entirely surprised that while Thomas is just like Sofia, Jacob gets it a little worse.

Well about two weeks ago, he got it real bad.

It started out with a small cough and a watery eye. We had a play date with some friends scheduled for that day and I would have canceled except that Jacob seemed fine. He was acting totally normal, still energetic, the cough was inconsistent, it was the watery eye through me for a loop. Maybe it's allergies? So we continue on with our play date. And then we left for Yosemite two days later. Nope, definitely not allergies. In typical Jacob fashion, he caught a cold that hit him hard. He pretty much slept the whole time. And I wouldn't have thought anything of it except when we got back home, I found out our friends we had the play date with came down with croup. Oh my lord. Did Jacob get those girls sick with croup?!? I can't even begin to tell you how awful I felt that my kid might have gotten other kids super sick. Ug. So although Adam and I both have very level heads and aren't usually the kind of parents that run to the doctor for every little thing, in this case, even though Jacob seemed to be getting better, perhaps we should get him checked out.

We booked an appointment for the next day. Adam thought it might be a waste since Jacob's energy was back, the cough subsided a lot and he was just dealing with some nasal congestion. Even so, we should at least ask the doctor if we should be concerned with how often he seems to be getting sick. Being the super dad that he is, Adam had to bring all three kids to Jacob's appointment since I was working that day. Thankfully the doctor confirmed he did not have croup, but his oxygen saturation was on the low side so she opted to give him an Albuterol treatment to see if that would help. And of course it didn't work. His saturation actually got worse. So the doctor tells Adam they have to admit Jacob to the hospital to put him on oxygen.

What?

Adam called me at work. "They are admitting Jacob to the hospital to put him on oxygen." What?!

I hung up the phone and I was surprised that I just lost it. It hit me all at once. My sweet baby is going to the hospital. I knew that it wasn't for anything too serious. I understood he just needed to be monitored. He wasn't going to the hospital because he was seriously ill. But regardless, it is not fun to hear. Especially when you aren't expecting to hear it what so ever. I wasn't there for the appointment so I had no idea how this all transpired. And I kept thinking how we almost canceled the appointment. If we had done that, how would we have known...

Ends up Jacob had bronchiolitis from RSV, Respiratory Syncytial Virus, so in essence, he caught a nasty cold. I was familiar with RSV already. It's a big deal in the premie world. So I knew what it was and that it is not uncommon for children to be hospitalized for it. But let me tell you, RSV is no joke. He stayed in the hospital for four days and even then, we asked to go home. They would have had him stay longer if we wanted to. He was on oxygen for the first two days. While on oxygen, his saturation was good. Off oxygen and it dipped. After two days, we took him of oxygen to see how he would do on room air. He was alright, hovering around 94. The true test was could he keep his sats up while he slept. During his afternoon nap he dipped to 90. Anything under that and alarms start going off. As long as he doesn't dip below 90 for more than 5 minutes, he's okay to stay on room air. Otherwise he'd have to go back on oxygen. His nurse and I had our eyes glued to that monitor. Longest he was below 90 was 3 minutes. A little repositioning and he went back up. Phew. At this point they weren't doing anything other than monitoring his vitals. He started with Albuterol treatments every four hours but they weren't helping so those were discontinued.

We had been in the hospital since Thursday afternoon. It's now Sunday and the doctor was concerned if Jacob was released, he might get worse at home as the congestion in his chest gets broken up and he tries to get rid of it. She was thinking we should stay. This is what surprised me most. No one was pushing us out. Other than the births of my children, I've never spend time much time in a hospital. All I have to go on about hospital experiences is what I hear from other people. The common theme is getting released asap. That was not the case with us. Not once did we feel like they were trying to push us out. But we were about done with being in a hospital. The doctor was concerned we would get home and if Jacob got worse, we'd want to go back. She didn't want us to have to come back. (She obviously doesn't know us and how much we can handle) The only concern we had was if his oxygen saturation dipped back down at home, how would we know. The doctor said we shouldn't worry about that. Now that he was having productive coughs, his saturation should stay up. Well... in that case... let's get the heck out of here and go home. If Jacob's still going to feel miserable, he might as well feel miserable at home. We can deal with a coughing kid. If the cough gets worse because he's now coughing gross stuff up, so be it.

We were released Sunday afternoon. Jacob's cough did get a bit worse. He was pretty much sleeping through the night in the hospital but we was waking up about 3 - 4 times a night at home for the first few days with these awful coughing fits. But for the most part he was doing really well. Four or five days after getting released, Jacob was pretty much back to normal. We kept him on quarantine at home for another week just in case. RSV is highly contagious and I definitely don't want him spreading those germs around.

All in all, having Jacob in the hospital was not that bad. I am so thankful that he had an awesome day nurse. Dawn in Walnut Creek, you rock. She was not only taking care of Jacob, she was also taking care of me. You want some coffee? Can I fill up your water? There's an extra breakfast tray, you want it? She was a perfect example of why I have thought of becoming a nurse. I am also very thankful that Adam and I both have very level heads. It makes dealing with things like this much less stressful. I was blown away by the amount of support we received too. Within 10 minutes of being at the hospital, Adam's work already told him to stay home and deal with it. His coworkers had offered to make us dinner, my coworkers did bring us dinner, my dad and his wife dropped what they were doing all weekend and came to visit us every day and helped us with the other two kids, my boss and manager checked in on me several times a day and good friends offered to help however they could and I knew they actually meant it. However much it sucked having a kid in the hospital, it was amazing to see just how strong our support system really is. So Thank You, Thank You, Thank You to everyone who knew and offered support or help. It meant a lot.

Here are some photos of our stay. Because however sad it is to see a tiny kid in a hospital gown, it is also equally as adorable.

Day One: On oxygen and exhausted from the day's events.