Over the last 2 years as Carter's mommy, I've certainly encountered many firsts. I've earned plenty of "badges" if you will. First time I nursed my baby, first time I left the house with him, first time I survived a full blown Target meltdown, first time I was peed, pooped on or spit up on in public with no corner or bathroom in sight...oh and my personal favorite, first time the nursing cover fell off, in front of an entire group of diners. Yep, plenty of firsts in motherhood. But, honestly in 2 years, the extent of Carter not feeling well were mostly centered around short spurts of sickness. Maybe a bout of diarrhea or a runny or stuffy nose. Not many things tended to linger and I usually credited good luck, baby Jesus or the fact that I tend not to hover and slather on the sanitizer or worry or fuss over things like that. I just have sort of slid by in the wellness department. Now with that said, we have had some really hard days. Carter does deal with constipation and has since he turned a year. We've been down many different roads with that one and have been assured by a few different doctors that it's normal, it will pass and will improve. I've always been wary of things like that. "It will pass, let it run it's course" etc....simply because they don't really KNOW your child. They look at your child and your child is simply that...a child. An appointment. A textbook case. A statistic. I take and respect their advice, but try to lean on Mommy's instinct more than anything at all. And BOY did my Mommy's instinct kick in last week. Something was just NOT right with our sweet Carter. He woke up the morning after Easter with what looked like a diaper rash. But I immediately didn't feel right about it. Carter has been very lucky and just generally doesn't get diaper rashes. In fact, I was JUST joking to Justin that we got 4 tubes of diaper rash cream for Carter's baby shower and we're still on tube 1! I was looking forward to the back up supply we would have when baby #2 arrives. But, again we went ahead with our day, business as usual. That night when I was changing him into his jammies, I noticed he had small red blotches (that looked like hives) under his arm pits and there were more in his diaper area. The hot spots for hives. I was worried. Worried is an understatement. I didn't sleep much that night. Worried they were going to spread. Worried they weren't hives. Worried I had exposed our bun in the oven to something dangerous (a lot of rashes can be harmful to unborn babies). Worried. Worried. Worried.
I woke Carter up Tuesday morning even before he woke up naturally because I couldn't wait another minute. The rash had spread now to his tummy, back and the top of his legs. He also had a few on his forehead and scalp. They didn't bother him at all though. Happy as clam. We took him to the urgent care, only to discover they don't open until 5pm. What the?! 5 pm is a BIT late for urgent issues! So we headed over to the ER and talked to an ER nurse, just to get her opinion on what we should do. She thought we should go ahead and admit him, since he's never had an allergic reaction before. The doctor looked him over and concluded it was an outdoor or contact allergy from Easter Sunday. He thought it may have been the grass, the heat or sun or maybe even the new outfit he wore on Sunday. He thought they would be gone in a few days and didn't think they would get any worse. Sounds like a pretty good prognosis right? Well, we certainly thought so!
The next day, Carter woke up with twice as many hives as the day before. He was clearly itchy at this point and just uncomfortable. We were prescribed an oral anti-itch medication and then just Benadryl. Neither were working it seemed and Carter progressively got worse as the day went on. The next morning I had my OB check up for our little bean. Justin and Carter usually accompany me, especially since Carter loves to see or hear the baby, but he was not well enough and I knew we would most likely be back to the doctors that day for my sweet boy. As soon as I got home and saw Carter for the first time that day, I burst into tears. Carter's hives had spread everywhere. On his eye lids, inside his ears and just about every square inch of his body you could think of. I called the advice nurse quickly to see what she thought and she gave me some things to look out for (difficulty breathing, confusion, dizziness, etc) and made an appointment with a pediatrician a few hours from them. LONGEST hours of my life. During that time Carter's hives began to swell and his eyes and nose bridge puffed up. Justin was monitoring his lungs with a stethoscope (those ambulance days came into handy here) and I just held him in my arms. I kissed his forehead at one point and he felt warm to me. We checked his temp and it was 100. At that point, we began packing up to the head to doctors and got checked in and we were seen in less than a minute. His fever turned out to be a good thing in some ways. It gave us an answer. He was seen by two doctors, who were AWESOME. One was a NICU doctor from the hospital, who happened to be helping out because they were short handed and he could not have been better with Carter. He really helped ease all of our fears. The fever was a sign and probably the only sign Carter was battling a virus of some sort. Which virus didn't seem to matter. They said it was a common virus of some sort, most likely not the flu because he had his flu shot already, but maybe a cold virus. There was nothing they could do to treat the virus. We were told it had to run its course. Never a fun thing to hear as a parent. As far as the hives went, they explained to us for a good ten minutes everything we ever needed to know about hives. We learned Carter was having an allergic reaction to the virus, or viral hives. Apparently this is very common in infants and toddlers and it can take up to 3 weeks for a child to fully heal. We learned that hives first appear in the hot spots, move throughout the body, can come and go in a matter of minutes and will turn a blue-ish gray or purple color when they have ran their course. Many of Carter's hives on his back, tummy and legs were gray or purple. It was super scary. He didn't look like our son at all. His nose was so swollen and eyes sunken in and the color of his skin was changing right before us. I felt sick to my stomach. They made a follow up appointment for the next morning and sent us home with Tylenol.
That night was the roughest night I've ever had as a mother. Getting Carter's fever down wasn't easy. He was refusing to drink, which the doctors said had he had been dehydrated earlier, they would have admitted him right that moment. They said he looked dehydrated, but checked him and he wasn't. So we were very worried about dehydration, an admission to the hospital and his fever not going down. We tried juice, water, milk, Popsicles...just about everything. He was also starting to FREAK when he even saw his meds. And anytime he cried, his hives would become redder and more inflamed. We had Carter sleep with us that night and from 11 (when he finally collapsed from exhaustion) to 3:30, he laid on my chest. I tried to move him next to me, afraid he would be too warm on me, and he always crawled right back up on me. I could feel that he was burning up. He woke up every half hour crying out in pain or saying that he itched. We had slathered on anti-itch cream, but I'm sure it burned. He HATED it. At 3:30, his fever broke. He woke up and yelled, "Nana, Papa! Movie!". Which made all of us laugh. We turned on a movie and gave him his meds. He then threw them right up all over me and our sheets. We quickly cleaned up and just cuddled for a few and then Carter out of the blue said, "Nigh Nigh" and pointed to our door. We knew he wanted his own bed and his room. But, I was still VERY worried about the swelling and it moving to his throat or tongue. Justin and I took turns checking up on him through the night and he slept soundly until 8, when we woke him up to head back to the doctors.
Our poor baby's ankles, legs and feet were so swollen he could not even stand or really move that morning. We rushed to our appointment, hoping for any answer but "let it run it's course" and knowing that we were not leaving until we were given or told something else. I couldn't even put Carter's shoes on because his ankles were so swollen. When the pediatrician saw that he couldn't even stand or walk around the room, she knew it was bad. She went ahead and ordered a steroid shot in his leg and BOY was that scary. The needle was so long and his leg was so swollen. He of course cried, but was surprisingly much braver than we ever imagined. He even took a sticker like a champ right after getting his shot. We had to stay 15 minutes for observation and then were released to go home. The steroid shot was the BEST thing we could have ever hoped for out of this appointment. His facial swelling started to go down almost immediately and by 3pm, when he woke up from his nap, all of his swelling had gone down and about 50 percent of his hives had gone away. By 7pm, about 75 percent of his hives had went away and what was left was blue-ish gray skin (to others must have looked SO freaky, to us felt like we could finally sigh some relief!). His fever also completely broke and never returned.
We are now a week into this and Carter only has a few hives left. All new ones that have popped up (as the doctor warned us would happen...those little buggers come and go for up to 3 weeks!). His skin has completely returned to normal color. He is extra sensitive these days and still not 100 percent himself, but I think I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I realize that this doesn't even COMPARE to what others may have or are going through. In fact, I've never counted my blessings so many times as I have this week. Carter is healthy and growing and this is just a hiccup in that tricky journey of parenthood. We have had so much support and love this week, which has helped us tremendously get through a pretty rough week for all of us. Carter is on the mends, hopping around the living room as I speak, back to his just about normal routine and I now bare another badge as his mommy...we made it through and we are looking forward to each and every day ahead!
