poor ava!

saturday morning went as usual. however, for some reason ava didn't want to eat anything... very unusual! bryce left to work (yes, bryce has a job... i'll save that for another blog), and literally 5 minutes after he left, ava began to gag and then suddenly just threw up. i rushed over and picked her up as she threw up once more on me. i was completely caught off guard because she was acting just fine a few minutes earlier. now ava is a very healthy baby, she has only been sick a couple times and she has never thrown up, (except for the time that she stuck her fingers down her throat over and over and made her self puke while we were in the car but that's another story). she threw up once more that morning and then besides the uncharacteristic, sporadic, clinging, cuddly behavior she was just fine the rest of the day. i thought it was very strange, she didn't have a fever and she only threw up a small amount of food from the night before so i didn't really know what was going on. later that evening her fun personality was back and she seemed to be feeling much better.

at 3am i awoke to ava screaming. when i went in to get her she was burning up. after some temp taking, tylenol and a little comforting she fell back asleep and we laid her back in her crib.

5am- more crying, and she still had a terrible fever. again we comforted her and laid her back to sleep.

when bryce went to get her later that morning, she was crying and reaching for him. he picked her up and she immediately grabbed her blanket to take and cuddle with. we had no idea she had any attachment to her blanket. the rest of the day was terrible. ava was in no mood for fun. she had no appetite and just layed in our arms, something very out of character. she kept falling in and out of sleep and had a terrible fever.

after her first nap, she awoke and was burning up. i took off all of her clothes and took her temperature... 104 degrees! i immediately began sponging her down with a washcloth and gave her some motrin. i managed to bring her temp down one degree. luckily, bryce just returned home from church, so he held ava while i got on the phone with the nurse. she told us that if her temperature kept going up and we couldn't get it to come down, we should take her to the emergency room. we managed to get it down to 101 degrees by 3pm and she was feeling much better and even had a little appetite.
she went down for a second nap only to awake less than an hour later with a returned high fever. again we gave her some tylenol but this time her temp didn't come down. we kept monitoring it but it wouldn't fall below 103. she started to refuse to drink anything and by this time bryce and i began to worry, but remained patient.

by the evening her fever remained high and we started considering taking her to the emergency room. i took her temp one more time and it was at 105. we gave her a bath and could not bring it down. we decided we needed to take her in.

the rest of the night was long and traumatic. when she got to the hospital her temp had come down to 104. they administered an insane amount of motrin and sat us out in the waiting room for a few minutes until a room opened up. ava still just layed on our shoulders, holding her blanket, exhausted and uninterested in everything. she wanted nothing to eat or drink. (she hadn't had a meal since friday night!) a room opened up a little bit later and a doctor finally came into see us. he examined her and called for some blood tests and a urine sample. they had to stick an iv in her, which was just so sad. they attached a splint to her arm to prevent her from bending her arm.

here we are trying to cheer her up by playing with the phone... for the urine sample they had to use a cathedar. it was terrible. about 2 hours after the motrin, they took her temp... it had come down to 100.8, thank goodness. she began to feel much better and her liveliness returned.

then it was just a lot of waiting, vital monitoring and temperature taking. her test results had come back, she had a viral infection and was also slightly dehydrated, so they hooked her up to an iv with a saline drip.

after 1 1/2 hours of the saline we were finally discharged. poor ava looked exhausted. i have never seen my poor baby look so awful. needless to say we were relieved to be going home. i kept telling bryce how i just wanted to take her home, but needed the relief of the doctors examination as well as them monitoring her temperature.

we got home, gave her one more dose of motrin and put her to sleep. she is still feeling awful today but her fever hasn't gone over 101. what a night! we are all so exhausted!