And life finally starts to settle down

Yikes, that was a much longer break than I thought it would be! I was expecting to finish that last post the next night, but here it is a week and a half later and I am just now getting back! This entry is going to read more like a journal entry than a blog, but that is because I am hoping to use this blog also as a sort of on-line journal for our family; eventually getting it printed out at the end of the year.

That Monday that I posted last, Emmett went to bed with a really high fever (103-ish), I let it ride hoping it would burn off whatever infection his little body was fighting. By Tuesday the fever was still there so that evening I started giving him some Tylenol to help cool his little baby brain - I don't like boiling tiny thinkers! Wednesday the fever was still going strong (in the 104's) and the Tylenol had yet to cool him down, so we went to the doctor. No UTI, no ear infections. The doctor suspected it was the beginnings of roseola and said,"He's a happy healthy baby other than his fever , I wouldn't worry about the fever until it hits 107 or so." WHAT???? Now, I didn't go to medical school and I don't get paid the big bucks for looking up snotty noses, but even I know that I (and the rest of the parenting community will probably agree with me) am going to worry about my 6 month old's fever a while before it hits that 107 mark! At 107 I am pretty sure his little brain really would be leaking out his ears as the jello-ish grey matter melted into a soupy grey substance. I asked him about febrile seizures, and since he had been running such a high fever already without one, did that mean we were in the clear for not having any. Jinx. I should have heard the tinkling of bells in the background when those words popped out of my mouth. He told me that there was a chance with every fever for a febrile seizure to come, but not to worry, that even though those seizures are scary, they are harmless.

Sure enough, after leaving the doctor's office feeling comforted about my otherwise healthy, happy, hot baby, who would soon break out in roseola spots, we went to the park to play for a few minutes. And there in my arms he has a seizure. We've been through enough seizures with Teagan to know the routine, so we hurry and head home to cool him off and let him rest it off - seizures are really exhausting to little ones and they can tend to be lethargic and cranky after they snap out of it. He didn't go the route of cranky, but he was cuddly and wiped out. So we just relaxed at home together and tried to reassure the bigger kids who were really worried about him.

That night we stayed up late watching a movie as a family, and shortly after Daddy headed off to bed and the two bigger kids had calmed down, my drowsy Emmett starts into another seizure. I took him back to Scott and asked him to give Emmett a blessing. As Scott gets up and starts getting dressed, the seizure is still going. So Scott decides that a trip to Primary might be called for - too many seizures in a too short of a time span, and this one was a long one. And the seizure is still going. Scott finishes getting dressed, I am getting the kids ready to head out the door, Emmett is in my arms, and the seizure is still going. The trip up to Salt Lake gets cancelled, and a phone call to 911 is made. He has been seizing for 5-6 minutes now, is breathing really shallow if at all, and is turning a very yucky shade of blue from head to chubby little toes.

So at 11 o'clock at night I call a neighbor to come stay with our three older kids while I ride in the ambulance with Emmett and Scott follows us in the car. (She was wonderful and came right over with a smile, like it was nothing at all. I love having such great friends!) In the ambulance the paramedics put him on oxygen and check his blood sugar...178. One of them says,"Nah, that must be wrong, let's check it again." 211. "Hey Jacob, what's the range for an infant?" "70-110" Sirens on and we head out of the neighborhood. In the end, they never did explain to me why his blood sugar was so high - one nurse I asked said it can get elevated with stress, so maybe that was it.

By this time the seizure has finally stopped; after what seemed like an enormous amount of time, but was actually probably only 9...or 10...or maybe 11 minutes, somewhere around there.We ended up spending the next 5 hours in the ER while they did CAT scans, X-rays, blood work, a urinalysis (he did not like having them put a catheter in...no, no, no!). Everything came back showing that he was indeed a healthy little man. No infection, nothing elevated, nothing too low. All the while he is still running a 103 fever. Smiling and giggling at all the nurses. Laughing with the CAT scan tech as she straps him to the bed. (I've said it before, and here it comes again, he is an angel baby!)

The only time he cried was when they were trying to get something out of him like blood or pee and when they were trying to get an IV in. He is such a *fluffy* baby they couldn't see a vein through all his wonderful fluff. The poor dude was poked 9-10 times in their attempts to get one in - he came home with bruises on both hands and feet and on the insides of his elbows. It got to the point that he was so exhausted from everything that he would fall asleep the moment the nurses stopped touching him. Then they would try poking somewhere else and he would wake up crying again as they poked in and out and dug about with the needle and would fall back asleep as soon as they pulled the needle out and put the cotton swab on. In the end, they had to call the NICU nurses down to come and put it in; and even they didn't get it until their third poke!


After our long night in the ER, we ran into yet another doctor with wonderful advice. I asked him what I should do it Emmett had another seizure like his last one where it lasts for a long time and he stops breathing. He said, "well, unless you have all the breathing apparatus at home, there's nothing you can do. And we don't really worry about seizures that are under 15 minutes long." Really? So I am supposed to watch my baby for 15 minutes until I am supposed to get worried? No way! Teagan's longest seizure probably only lasted 2 minutes or so and those were hard enough for me to handle. With Emmett, after 5 minutes we were pacing the hallways. And about 7 minutes in he was all blue...not worry until it lasts longer than 15... no way! We thanked him for everything and headed home, and Scott called in to work to let them know he wasn't coming in - after all, it was already time for him to be going to work but he hadn't gone to sleep from the previous day yet! Emmett's fever calmed down for a few hours after that, but it picked back up again and stayed with him until Sunday.


We took him back to his doctor Wednesday, and the doctor still continued to tell me that a rash was coming... he knew it was going to be roseola, and Emmett would break out in a rash. A rash that he has yet to get.Among all that commotion on Wednesday, Emmett's two bottom teeth finally broke the gum line and now he has two little teeth coming in! And on Wednesday afternoon, Scott bought us a (used, but absolutely wonderful all the same!) portable dishwasher that we hook up to the sink to wash our dishes! The kids were thrilled to be free from handwashing (or so they thought!), I love not hearing the whining that always accompanied having the kids do kitchen duty, and Scott loves knowing that his cups are sterile-ly clean and don't smell like they were drying on a wet towel. It was like Christmas for everyone around our house! Plus, I harvested a lovely bunch of purple pod green beans and bush beans and we had steamed beans for dinner - straight from the garden. Yummy!
So now we are tring to resume life as normal. I've bought an extra bottle of both Tylenol and Motrin to keep in the diaper bag for when a rogue fever comes around, and Teagan and Garrett have calmed down on the, "Mom, I think Emmett's having another siezure, come quick!" alerts. You know what's funny, even while Scott is on the cell phone talking to the 911 dispatcher as she walks him through how to do mouth to mouth on a baby, the ones I was really worried about were Teagan and Garrett. They were so scared and looked so worried as they hugged each other crying. I pulled them aside and we said a prayer for Emmett and for ourselves. I told them that everything was going to be okay and that Heavenly Father was watching everything right at this moment and knew what was going on. That they could rely on Him to help them be strong and comforted. And it worked. They calmed down quite a bit. Even as the ambulance roared up to our house and the whirlwind of commotion began, they had stopped crying. Hopefully they will remember that little feeling of peace that helped them through this and will have learned a little more about relying on God's arm. I guess that is another new purpose of this blog, to help my family and I see the hand of God in our lives and to realize daily how blessed we really are.