Journey to Baby Jones: Baby M's Final 1st Birthday Party

I know what you're thinking, "really, another party". Yes, this is the grand finale to Baby M's parties. We celebrated this milestone birthday with close family, had more cake, opened more presents, and once again tried to get Baby M to have some cake :-)

This was actually the party that almost wasn't. The day after Baby M's official birthday, she woke up with a fever. I wasn't too concerned because she is teething (ever notice how everything gets blamed on teething after that first tooth comes in?) I gave her a dose of infant tylenol and she seemed fine during the day.....duh, duh, duh, duh.....the evening rolls around and I notice that she's warm. My temporal thermometer is now reading 103.5. Wow!! How did that happen???? No other symptoms, but this is a scary, high fever for me. Neither of the other two girls has ever had a fever over 103. I called our insurance nurse helpline--that was a complete waste of energy. I think she was reading from the same babybook that I had already consulted. I called our pediatrician's office and was patched thru to the answering service which then put me thru to the hospital's nurse helpline. I was pleasantly surprised by a very competent and caring nurse. After that debacle of a trip to the ER in October, I had pretty much written off this particular hospital as a "been there, done that and we won't ever go there again". My instructions were clear--alternate doses of infant tylenol and ibuprofen and if the fever goes over 104, then put her in a bath for approximately 20 minutes.

I had R set the alarm so that I was getting up every 2 hours to check on her and at some point in the middle of the night, I did have to put her in the bath, but as the morning rolled around, the fever subsided. Again, I'm thinking it must be her teeth since there still aren't any other symptoms.

It's a Friday, and I'm off to work and the girls are off to Grammy and D-daddy's. I leave my mom with instructions to give the infant tylenol at the slightest increase in temperature. I think she may have given it once during the day. So here comes the evening, and once again the temperature has ratcheted up to over 103. It was another night of up every couple of hours to check the temperature and administer medicine. At some point, the temporal thermometer read 105.5. I immediately put her in the bath knowing that if it didn't drop within 20 minutes that we were headed to the ER. It did drop back down to 103 but I knew by then that we were going to be headed to pediatrician's office the next morning.

Saturday morning (day of her party) and we are sitting outside the pediatrician's office waiting for them to open. They have a walk-in clinic available on Saturday and I wanted to make sure that we got there early to get in line. The crazy thing was, we were the only people there when they opened the doors. The pediatrician's rotate and so I knew there was a chance we wouldn't see our regular doc and we didn't. However, I really liked the doc that we saw. He was very thorough, has a daughter the same age as Baby M (and a 2 week old infant--who planned that????), and said that his daughter had experienced something similar about a month ago. His thought was that it was Roseola (a common childhood virus) or a UTI. If it was Roseola, it would present with fever for four days and then Baby M would break out in a rash that would signal the end of the virus. If, on the other hand, it was a UTI, and we waited an additional two days to treat it, then there was the possibility of renal damage. His suggestion was to do a catheterization for a urine sample.

What to do? What to do? Knowing we were getting ready to leave for a long planned trip to Sesame Place in less than 48 hours, the choice was pretty clear. This was the first time that any of my girls have been catheterized for a urine sample and while uncomfortable, it was probably way more upsetting for me than it was for Baby M. The initial dip-stick test came back bacteria free and the doctor agreed to send it to the lab to culture but felt that it would also come back "clean". His diagnosis was most likely Roseola.

So we left out of there knowing that this would probably run it's course in about two days and keeping our fingers crossed that it would pass before we left for our trip. Did I mention that we were in there for approximately two hours and I had K with me? In 2 hours time, she managed to eat just about every snack that I had in my bag, color on every piece of blank paper, and watch Bubble Guppies multiple times!

So I leave you with these pics of Baby M's final 1st birthday party :-)