First Ear Infection and Trip to the ER (llloooooong)

For the last week or so the day care center had been telling us that Sabrina had been refusing the bottle or giving a fight at her usual feeding times. She was always happy to eat her rice cereal, however. So we figured it was because she's yearning for solid food and more recently because she has a cold, which started Friday morning.

On Friday night, she had about 4 ounces of formula around 5pm (her usual bottle is 9 ounces and she has no problem finishing it off). She normally also has another 8 or 9 oz bottle at 7pm, her final one for the night, just before bed. But she completely refused that one, which I thought was odd. Saturday morning she only drank 1 ounce and usually she's crying for that first bottle of the morning -- it's all I can do to change her diaper and clothing as soon I take her out of her crib before the hunger cries start. Her cries this time were pain-related (I have been able to decode her cries). So I called the pediatricians office, described the feeding patterns and mentioned the bad cold/cough she has. They suggested we bring her in to have her ears checked out. I must admit, I hadn't even considered an ear infection.

My mom was in town for the weekend so the 3 of us gals head out to the doctor's office. Sure enough, one ear was infected. The doctor explained that it's painful to suck a bottle when an ear infection is present. Plus, like adults, babies don't feel very hungry when they are sick but it's important to keep her hydrated. I asked what we should do if she still refused to eat and she suggested giving her Pedialite, which I had on-hand already. So we picked up a prescription for Amoxicillin and brought her home.

We gave her the first dose of liquid Amoxicillin with a bottle. She drank I think 4 ounces or so. I was quite pleased and decided to feed her rice cereal also to help her feel more full. That went down really well (she loves that stuff!). While my mom was holding her, I went downstairs to throw a load of laundry in the wash. Then I hear my name being called. Sabrina has thrown up all over my mom, the carpet, the sofa, etc. Oops. We got her changed and after about 45 minutes, tried to feed her again. She refused. We tried Pedialite, she refused. Meanwhile, she'd only had one slightly wet diaper and I'm beginning to get concerned about dehydration. Eventually she drank 3 ounces of formula. Better than nothing!

Later around 7pm and we tried formula again, no luck. She was crying and turning her head away each time the bottle approached her face. When we stopped trying to feed her, she'd be in great spirits, albeit a little pale. She then threw up again. This time she was so soaked in it we gave her a bath. We attempted to give her some Pedialite and in fact we all took turns trying to feed her. I even tried using a syringe and that only worked for a few teaspoons. My maternal instinct was telling me to take her to the ER. At least there they could hook her up to an IV for hydration if they had to.

We called to ask and all they would say is "We can't dispense medical advice but if you feel you need to bring her in, go ahead". OK then! Gene and I took Sabrina to the local hospital's ER. We got there at 10:40 pm. We got a room right away and they took her vitals. No fever, normal pulse. Through all of this Sabrina was a real trooper. they checked both her ears and this time they said that both were infected, one worse than the other. They wanted to make sure she didn't have RSV. I had read about RSV and I knew it was something serious. RSV stands for Respiratory Syncytial Virus infection. Like a cold, it is very common and very contagious, but it can lead to pneumonia or other problems, especially babies. To check for RSV, they had to insert a little cannula into her nose to suction out some mucus to test. She didn't like that too much, as you can imagine. But within a minute, she was back to usually cheery disposition. After a 30 minute wait, the nurse practitioner came in and told us it was negative. She ordered some medication to settle her stomach, which another nurse administered.

We waited 30 minutes for that medication to take effect and then we were instructed to slowly feed her some pedialite with a syringe. Only 2 teaspoons at a time, wait 5 minutes, then another 2 teaspoons. It was working and she was actually swallowing it. Thank goodness! They gave her a dose of Amoxicillin since she threw up the other dose earlier. We were discharged around 1:20 am.

We put Sabrina to bed at 2 am and she was up 8:30 am. Sunday was better and we were careful not to over-feed her in our glee. She's still in pain from the pressure in her ears. For lunch, I prepared her rice cereal with pedialite and made it very runny, and she gobbled that down. Her formula feedings were better, too, she drank about 5-6 ounces each time.