The Drapela Family: A not so exciting first...

On Monday, April 27, after sleeping all night :) I was feeding Knox and felt as if he were really warm. Now, he tends to be very hot natured and can only sleep in a onesie and a swaddle, but he never felt like he cooled off the whole time I held him. He had been a little congested since the week before but nothing major. I laid him down to change his clothes since we were about to leave the house and he screamed. If I picked him back up he was fine. I decided to take his temp and he turned out to have a temp of 100.4. He was my first "baby" to have a fever so I wasn't sure if this was considered "high" for a baby or not. I decided to play it safe and just put in a call to the Dr. They did not like it being that high for him being so young so they told me to go ahead and come straight in. When we got to the Dr. and they checked it was 101.8. The Dr. came straight into our room as they were very concerned since a fever this high on a baby under 3 months was not ok. She looked at everything (ears, nose, throat, head, checked for any rashes, etc) and could find nothing wrong. She was concerned though that every time she asked me to lay him down he would scream (I mean SCREAM, turn red, etc.) but if she told me to pick him up he stopped. She decided she wanted me to take him to the ER at Tx Children's. (Insert Freak Out Momma Moment!) Since she could find nothing wrong but with his screaming she was concerned that maybe he was having headaches when lying down. She went from the possibility of a UTI to Meningitis. She said they could check his urine, do blood-work, and if needed a Spinal Tap. She was pretty sure regardless they would be keeping us for a while to administer antibiotics since he was so little.

Luckily, since our pediatrician is Tx Children's we were in the system by the time we got there. They helped me pack him up (through my tears as I was terrified) and told me just to get on the road and they would check me out. I headed over there calling N on the way telling him to meet me (luckily he only works like 5-10 minutes away). By the time we got to the ER his temp was 101.9 at around 10:30. So, little man had his first (as well as our first with any of our kids) ER visit at 6 weeks 2 days old. I am thankful it was not a broken bone, blood oozing, deathly ill kind of a trip, but it was scary none-the-less.

They took him for a chest XRAY first just to rule out anything there. Poor baby they position we had to hold him down to get that was awful! That came back fine. They had to catheterize him to get a urine sample, again not fun, but not too invasive. They gave him a dose of tylenol as well to bring down his fever.

Poor baby was so un-lucky when it came to getting his blood drawn/IV in. Throughout the course of the day we were there they had to stick him 6 times. Yes, SIX! It was terrible! They would stick him and his blood would NOT flow. They were moving the needle around, trying everything and every place. He was poked and prodded soo much! They even would bring in different people to try and be more successful. A total of 4 different nurses, lab techs, etc. tried throughout the day. They stuck him in both hands, one elbow, and both feet to try and draw blood. He also had the IV stuck in one foot. If they were successful at getting a few drops of blood it ended up "clotting" before they could run it through the machine and they had to do it again. UGH!

Apparently parents seem to get ugly in these situations. They kept thanking us so repeatedly for being so patient and nice with them. Now, it was no fun holding my child down to be poked, prodded, and squeezed ALL day and in pain. But, they were only doing their job to help us and our child so why we would take it out on them I don't know.

He had 2 units of IV fluid--one at 12:30 & one at 2:30.

At 2:15 his fever was 100.1 and at 4:00 it was 100.2

In between the pokes I just held Knox and he slept. It was a long day and we were just waiting for answers. In the meantime none of this was planned for the day. I had taken girls to school and had some errands planned to run. Those never happened as I headed straight to Sugar Land to the Dr. With that being said, we had to call my mom to come up to Katy and get the car seats from my car that afternoon so she could get back to get the girls in the afternoon as we were still in the ER.

At about 5:30 the Dr. came back in with some results. His urine and the small blood they had all came back "fine". This meant nothing showed up yet and they were going to continue to let them grow for the next 48 hours to take the cultures. The assumption was it was just something "viral". After a lengthy discussion they released us (around 6 pm) telling us to bring him in immediately if his fever spiked again, or any other symptoms appeared, etc. They had already spoken to our Pedi and scheduled a follow-up appt for the following morning.

Tuesday morning we headed back to Sugar Land for our follow-up. The urine culture had begun growing something but they couldn't be certain what until the 48 hours was up. He still had a mild fever and they gave him an anti-biotic shot to begin the healing. We were instructed to continue taking his temp. every few hours and to call if it goes back up.

On Wednesday, after 48 hours, they called and determined he did have a UTI and E. Coli. (which I believe the way I understood it was the bacteria causing the UTI). I wasn't sure how this happened and they explained it to me that it is a bacteria that can be picked up at birth but usually takes this long to appear in babies. It is not "un-common" but not "common" either. They told us that in babies under 6 months boys can get UTI's as commonly as girls, but after 6 months they are more common in girls. They put him on a 10 day RX and we were to continue to monitor his fever and come back after 10 days to re-cath him and check his urine to see if it had cleared up.

Fast forward 10 days....we took him back on Friday, May 8 for his 2 month well check and follow up from UTI. They re-cathed him and the plan was put in place. Since he was under 2 months old with his first UTI, the standard protocol is to find out why this happened. Since his urine came back clear (meaning he responded to the antibioitcs) we have 2 tests scheduled for next week to rule out other things. He will first be having a renal (kidney) ultrasound to check and make sure they are there, in the right position, size, etc. After that he will have a VCUG test. This test re-caths him again and injects dye into his bladder. They will watch on screens as he urinates and see the path it takes. They are watching for "reflux" which is when the urine is traveling back up before coming out, etc. They want to make sure there is no anomalies with his make-up and make sure everything is formed and working right. She went over some things with what the results could mean but right now we are just praying all of these tests come back just fine and this was just the result of some bacteria from birth.