728x90
my iParenting
From Our Sponsors
Get Pregnancy Information
e-newsletters
Sign up to receive our free weekly e-newsletters

new terms of use
new privacy policy
award-winning products
The iParenting Media Awards program helps parents find the best products for their families.
Home › Diaries › Robin G › January 7, 2001

Robin G's Diary Entries

Diary Navigation:

January 7, 2001

Bailey is slightly over 9 months old!

We hope everyone had happy and safe holidays. Welcome back!

Where to catch up?? So much seems to have happened since my last post that I'm not sure where to begin. Let's see, the week before Christmas I had grand plans of baking for all the neighbors and cleaning my house until it gleamed. Well as the saying goes, "The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray."

I never knew rivers of worry could wear caverns to your very soul. And yet, that's what happened the week before Christmas. You see, Bailey was intensely sick that week. I took her to the doctor the next morning (after my last post) and the doctor diagnosed Bailey with an ear infection and wasn't very concerned about the diarrhea and vomiting because Bailey was able to keep her formula down. Things went downhill from there. That night Bailey began vomiting her formula, and the diarrhea worsened. I paged the doctor on-call in the middle of the night. He prescribed an anti-nausea medicine and said that he wanted to see her first thing the next morning. So, at 4 a.m. Bailey and I trudged to the only pharmacy open in town.

When I took her in to see the doctor the next morning, to my amazement she had lost an entire pound in one night! The pediatrician said that she was dehydrated (she did feel sooo much lighter in my arms) and said that she really needed intravenous glucose. We had to go straight to the hospital! Did I mention that Steve was working out-of-town at the time? And he wasn't just an hour or two away, he was all the way across the country in Los Angeles! So Bailey and I were alone because our family doesn't live nearby. It happened so quickly and I was so exhausted and sick with worry that I didn't think to call many of our friends, just a couple. I've never felt so isolated, so scared in my entire life. Just watching my small infant (she's so delicate and petite anyway) in a hospital gown with an IV taped to her foot, soaked my heart with tears. The only other time I've felt such intense worry was when my mom had cancer when I was 14, it was the type of worry that literally takes your breath away and leaves you exhausted with fear. In this instance the worry was different because I'm responsible for Bailey. When I saw her big blue eyes pleading with me to take away the pain, I could truly understand the desire to die protecting my child.

I felt like I'd stepped into the twilight zone. Bailey was terrified and clingy; I was on the brink of collapsing with exhaustion. I had this paranoid notion that a nurse looked at me as if it were my fault -- that the whole situation could've been avoided. It made me angry to think this when I'd done everything possible by taking her to doctors and calling doctors.

Anyway, over the mountaintop and through the night Bailey and I came. We made it through 23 hours of hell in the hospital by ourselves. You see, we weren't really alone. Christ was with us the entire time -- He strengthened me when I didn't think I could handle it anymore. All the exhaustion, all the fear; He saw me through it and He strengthened Bailey, too. She looked so much better by the time we left the hospital and we both were so very relieved to get back home again.

So, we spent the week before Christmas in hospitals and doctors' offices. I got very little baking and hardly any housecleaning done. But the most important thing was that Bailey survived and is now as healthy as can be.

Christmas was wonderful. Steve's mom and dad came from Missouri and his brother came from New York. Bailey was the center of entertainment. She loved the boxes and bows, just as we'd expected, and seemed much more intrigued by the cat's toys than her own. Her grandma and grandpa gave her lots of nice toys, especially the push/ride scooter car from FAO Schwartz.

She especially loved being pushed in it by grandpa. Steve and I gave her a push walker that has an electronic activity board on the front of it. That was a big hit as well. The day after Christmas Steve's family left and Steve and I both came down with Bailey's stomach flu! So that week we recovered and then we took off for Orlando on December 30 and headed for the Citrus Bowl in which Auburn played. Bailey was an angel during the trip and loved spending time with her grandparents who came back from Auburn to go on the trip with us. We also bundled up and went to SeaWorld, which Bailey, as well as everyone else, greatly enjoyed. Whew, so that's about it.

Now we're back home and things are getting back to normal. Bailey has just started pulling on her ears the last couple of days so I wonder if she has another ear infection. She has her 9-month checkup tomorrow so we'll find out then. My next post will cover her checkup.

I hope you all are rested and recovered from the holidays. Happy New Year everyone! MAY 2001 BE THE BEST YET!

Hugs,

Robin & Bailey



previous diarynext diary



 
want to keep a diary on iParenting?
Authoring a diary on the iParenting network allows you to chronicle your family's story, preserving it for years to come. It's also a great way to get the most out of the iParenting community.   Click here to start...