I am determined to keep this blog about positivity and all things Stella, which I can say, are usually fun and smiley and nothing but optimistic, because when I look at her, I see only happiness and many, many months and years of blessings ahead of us. But we can only be perfect and happy a certain percentage of the time...so I'll just ask for prayers. Please pray that this difficult time we are going through eases up and that with God's help, we'll be directed on the path he chooses. Another good idea would be to pray for understanding...to let go of the things we cannot change and to change the things we can.
In other news, Stella is a sick baby! The ped said she has a virus, but unfortunately we cannot tell from the blood test what kind. Stella hasn't been quite herself these last few days and I haven't really known what to do. She hasn't been running a fever but I could tell she doesn't feel good. She was a lot more fussy than she's ever been, which is very out of character for her. We've been on rice cereal for a week or 2 now, so I know she's getting enough food, along with nursing, except for these last 72 hours where she just hasn't nursed for her usual amount of time. After 2 days of straight fussing, I scooped up Stella in a rush to go to the doctor, without an appointment. I was just at my wits end...I knew something was wrong with her...I couldn't be imagining it.
While I cried and explained the symptoms she'd had and then apologized for crying, the nurse kindly asked if I'd been getting enough sleep...what is enough sleep these days?? Really? I really didn't know how to answer that. We go back to Stella and they checked her out and said she didn't have thrush (one of the symptoms I noted was a whitish color to her upper back gums and roof of her mouth - but the ped said that was normal coloring for a baby) or a fever or an earache.
After talking with the ped a bit more and explaining that her hunger tapered off a bit (even though she tipped the scaled at 15lbs 7 oz!!!) and she hadn't gone to the bathroom in 6 days, she decided to order a blood test to rule out an infection. So my poor baby had to get stuck:( It was just as bad as a shot:( The tests came back within minutes and it showed that she definitely had a virus. The ped told me that she most likely hasn't been running a fever because she was breastfed versus formula fed. You see, she is definitely sick and more than likely has body aches and head aches and maybe even a sore throat, but the usual tell tale sign of a sick baby is fever and crankiness. Babies who are breastfed tend to fight of fevers more than formula fed babies, so she was very happy I brought her in rather than blame her crankiness on teething or a growth spurt. The ped said my breast milk was probably the reason she WASN'T running a fever, which made me feel great about our decision to continue nursing indefinitely!
So I'm giving her .8ml of Tylenol every 4 hours as needed and will watch her over the next few days. The ped said with a viral infection, you can't really do anything except keep her chocked full of fluids - antibiotics only work with bacterial infections. So here's hoping that Stella gets to feeling much better soon! I'll leave you with this pretty precious picture...it was taken today at 21 weeks, 1 day old sharing a smile for mommy even though she felt pretty rotten!
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