Levi’s dramatic first week…

Life has not gone as we expected.  One week ago this morning Levi joined our happy little family making it a complete family of 6.  I thought the hardest part was going to be recovering from the unexpected C-section and having to wrap my head around the fact that I was going to have to take it easy.  (No lawn mowing for me quite yet!)  But I was wrong… Levi was planning to make things more interesting.

We decided last week that it would be beneficial for me to stay the extra night (Thursday night) and come home on Friday. It gave me one more night of good sleep with just Levi and some extra time to let my incision heal.  So by the time Friday morning rolled around I was itching to get home and back to normal life.  Emily, Zeke and Griffin’s Mom, came over and watched Josiah and Maddie so Tim could bring us home from the hospital.  We then enjoyed a low key afternoon and Bakers came over for a visit that evening.  Saturday morning Ryan and his family stopped in for a visit and then after lunch we all took naps before Josiah and Tim headed out to go to Griffin’s Birthday party (it was a dump truck theme and Tim brought his dump truck and skid to let the kids play in them).  Chloe also had a birthday party to go to, so I drove her to that one and then swung in to say hi to Tim and everyone at Griffin’s party.   It sounds like a lot, but trust me I was taking it slow.  We came home, got the kids to bed and then sat down to finish our movie, Captain America: Civil War.  As it ended Levi woke up.  That’s when I noticed he was warm.  Very warm.  We took his temp and he was 101.  I remember the pediatrician saying anything over 100.4 we need to bring him in.  So we decided it would be best if I brought him in to the E.R.

At the E.R. they confirmed his temp was 101.7 so it was a good thing we came in.  They told me they were going to do the full gamut of tests to figure out the cause of the fever.  So over the next few hours they had to do a urine catheter, X-rays, draw blood, insert an I.V. and start him on antibiotics.  We came in around 9:30 and were finally admitted into a room and hooked up for the night at 2:30.  (Also, as a side note:  my phone was almost dead when I got to the hospital.  Of all the nights to not be able to use my phone!  I was able to conserve enough battery life to send Tim updates, but that was it.  Needless to say, that was a very long 5 hours with nothing to do to distract me and only my irrational thoughts swirling around in my tired head… but after we finally got settled I was able to get a couple hours of sleep and then I happened to mention to a nurse that my phone was dead and she found me a charger.  Yay!)

And that brings us to Sunday morning.  Tim was able to call Jennifer who came right over so he could get tot he hospital and get caught up on the situation–as well as bring me much needed items.  I didn’t foresee spending the night (let alone MANY nights) when I came to the E.R. so I needed things like a toothbrush!  Ironically I hadn’t unpacked my hospital bag yet so he pretty much just brought most of that back for me.

The past couple of days here at the hospital have been a bit of a blur to me.  I thought I would just rest most of the time I was here, but that has proved to be harder than it sounds.  There are so many monitors and “things” hooked up to Levi that all have alarms that ring if something is off.  And they are loud.  In fact certain buzzers actually get louder the longer they ring… I know it’s for safety, but it makes sleeping very difficult.  Plus the nurses were in and out every 30 min or so the first 2 days checking on I.V.’s and vitals.  I was able to go home yesterday afternoon to spend some time with the kids and I took a short nap while Maddie was sleeping–and it was divine to sleep in my own bed and my own quiet house.  🙂

Tim has done a great job of documenting the details of what’s been happening with Levi, so I’ve decided to postdate his updates on here.  I’m going to post them on the day that it would go with, so you’re going to see some posts from this past week popping up, but I’m sure you’ve read them all on Facebook already.  I’m putting them on here so I can have a record of this later…