Worst day ever

Hi, it's Misty here. I need to vent. I'm pretty sure that Lauren had what could quite possibly be her worst day ever yesterday. I feel so bad, sad, mad and angry all at the same time. She's only been alive for 11 months but I feel like she really went through the ringer yesterday.

I should start at the beginning though. Her problems started about 11 days ago. It was a Wednesday and after her lunch she had a very interesting diaper. (Disclaimer: I'm a mom. I talk about contents of diapers...you'll have to deal with it.) It was very watery and I could see all the details and a bunch on undigested food. I thought it was odd and chalked it up to a new brand of mandarin oranges. Later that evening, it continued. I started to worry. That night we packed everyone up for a long planned trip to Duluth. I assumed her bum would be better in the am since I had been gooping it up well.

It was not... she was miserable and after a call to the nurse line I had a prescription for something that was supposed to help. It did. Her runny diapers continued but her bum was on the mend. Or so we thought.

Fast forward to this past week. It looked pretty good on Tuesday and we thought the runny diapers were just an effect of teething (so we have been told by EVERYfreaking one, so at this point I guess I'm starting to believe it too, even though there's no sign of a tooth or even any excess drooling.) Well anyway, her bum started to get worse again on Wednesday. Thursday was even worse and I decided to take her in, but for some reason talked to a nurse before scheduling the appointment who encouraged me to wait it out (you know, that darn teething.) By the end of the day on Thursday (about 30 minutes before closing time at the clinic) I put in a frantic call to the Dr. it was getting worse and she was inconsolable at this point. (I should mention that we had not been using wipes on her for a week. So, every diaper change had involved a mini sitz bath or a spray out in the sink, and pretty much every diaper was a messy one.) Just reading this right now makes me think to myself, what the heck about that is normal, why did you wait so long?? Well I guess I had been bamboozled into thinking it was normal (Heck, at this point we STILL don't know the cause, it could be normal.) Anyway to make a long story short the Dr. called back and said to try adding hydrocortisone cream to help with the inflammation and come in Monday if it's not better.

At this point I'm going to skip the 3am scream-fest and skip to Saturday and a trip to urgent care. I demanded (politely) to see an MD, I wanted an actual doctor and luckily it was dead so we didn't have to wait long. She asked all the questions that I had been going over in my head for pretty much a week now. No new foods, no antibiotics for a month, no allergies, nothing that we could think of (we switched back to regular formula a month ago, but that was probably too far back to matter at this point we think.) She was very concerned about the redness and sores. So, she gives us a prescription for a compounded butt paste, an anti-biotic and an antibacterial paste. She also ordered some tests and this is where the worst day ever part comes in.

We headed down to the lab for Lauren's first ever blood draw. She did so well with the finger stick that the phlebotemist couldn't get enough blood from her finger and had to move on to the butterfly and the needle. (EEEK!) She was sitting in my lap and he wasn't confident in the vein so we took her into the room next door and laid her down. I'm very thankful he was quite skilled in his job. I have to admit I was pretty nervous when I saw him, but he got the job done. I had to hold L's arms down and Kev had her chest. The scream was pretty terrible but luckily she's a good bleeder and it went quickly. The kindly man asked me if I needed a tissue as we were leaving but I had managed to blink back my tears. It was terrible.

The blood tests have already came back and everything looks good. We brought her stool sample back yesterday but it takes awhile to culture so the soonest we'll hear anything is tomorrow, but most likely Tuesday. The doctor told us if she spikes a fever or if it gets worse we're to take her to the ER. She even called us today to check on her (she's not better, but it's not worse and she's not screaming as much when we hose her off.) Our plan is to take her in to her regular pedi tomorrow as the loose stools have not stopped and she may want to run more tests. So, we have no answer yet as to why our preciousness has had the water poop blues for almost 12 days now.

The other part of her no good very bad day. Last night she was getting her bath and again was wanting to stand up (no matter how many times we sit her back down, tell her no.) Well this time she slipped and bonked some part of her face on the porcelain. I heard a thud, "expletive" from Kev and a wail from her. Needless to say I stormed in to see what was wrong only to see a trickle of red blood streaming out of her mouth. It stopped almost immediately and we have yet to see where she actually hurt herself. It was a rough night in the Thompson house. And THAT, is the bean's worst day ever. UGH!