Our first visit to the ER.

A friend recently told us that now we are officially parents because we have had our first trip to the ER with the baby. I don't know about it making us parents, but it was certainly a frightening experience. It started the Wednesday before Easter. We went out for some dinner, bringing Ava along of course, and when we got home she seemed awfully warm when I took her out of her car seat. We thought a temperature check was in order, and it quickly registered 102.3! We called our pediatrician, who suggested we strip her down and re-take the temp in a few minutes. It was coming down a little, but not quickly enough, so we called her back and she said a trip to the ER was in order. She warned us to expect a full battery of tests, including a lumbar puncture, since she was so little and had a high fever with no other outward symptoms. They were very fast in getting us into the new pediatric ER at Shands south campus - I think that barely an hour had passed from the time we hit the door to when the blood was all drawn and the LP was done. Ava also got a dose of Tylenol, which started to bring the fever down. We were right with her while she got her IV inserted, but the doctors advised us to not be in the room when they did the LP. It turns out that she did great for that, and didn't even need the little tub of "baby crack" that they had ready as a distraction.

At about 4:00 in the morning (we got to the ER at about 9:30), we were transferred over to a room on the peds floor, where we were put in a shared room with possibly the least considerate human being in Gainesville. (on the Nextel 2-way phone all night long, yelling at her sick child, complaining loudly about the hospital staff, dousing herself in perfume to cover up the cigarette smoke, etc.) It was a very long wait to get into a private room the following evening.

We ended up staying in the hospital until Saturday morning, because the 48-hour rule-out cultures didn't come back until about midnight Friday. Fortunately, everything came back all clear, and it seems that Ava just picked up a virus somewhere. The antibiotics seem to have mixed up her little baby gut, though, and now we have a very gassy and fussy baby as her natural balance restores itself. But that's okay - we'd rather have her a little gassy (well, a lot gassy it turns out) than sick.

We got back home in time to take her to great grandma's house for Easter, and to enjoy a visit from grandma and granddad. Actually, we had a house full of guests all the way through Tuesday. Then grandma left on Wednesday, with granddad following on Thursday. Now we're still kind of recovering from the chaos, and trying to get the little fussy butt into more of a routine. We actually had two straight nights of her sleeping until 4:30 or so, but then the gas hit. Maybe once we get that resolved there will be something approaching a full night's sleep. We finally got a nursery monitor, so we can start putting her down for naps in her crib soon, which is a good thing since she is close to outgrowing the bassinet attachment on her pack n' play. She's approaching 9 1/2 lbs now, and we can really see and feel the difference from when she first came home. She's even too big for some of her first outfits, and she's closer to being able to wear a lot of the cute things waiting in her closet.

Check out some pics below of her second month (thus far), her hospital stay and her first Easter.