A Trip to the E.R.

Okay, so since the last post's segment about Sophie and all her issues I've been a little concerned about how much she's getting to eat. Its like I wasn't looking at her objectively until someone commented on how small she is and then it kind of hit me that yeah, she IS tiny. And in fact, I think she's shrinking.

So, last Friday during our WIC certification this was confirmed, when they weighed her, and she only weighs 14 pounds. Which is not even on the charts for her age. So, after talking to the nutritionist and explaining how she's been so fussy and seems hungry a lot and at the same time how she seems to be allergic to so many things, she told me to try and feed her as much as I can with the foods that she can eat (don't worry, we're getting to the emergency room part). So, for the last few days, I've been trying to bulk her up with lots of fruits and veggies and baby cereals. Well, last night for dinner, I gave her some kiwi -- which she has had a couple times before -- and she was gobbling them down. However after about 4 or 5 slices, she started to get really fussy and refused to eat any more. Then I started to notice the spots appearing around her mouth. I gave her some benadryl and proceeded to get her jammies on and not until a few minutes later did I notice that her upper lip had swollen to 2 or 3 times its normal size and the lower lip was following suit and she was drooling a ton. After a call to the pediatrician's office after hours line, they told me I should go down to the emergency room in case her tongue and back of her throat started to swell as well.

Here she is after the triage assessment.

And here she is an hour and a half later when she finally fell asleep. You can really see how swollen her lips were still. Sorry its blurry, I was holding her and trying to take the picture all the while trying to keep her asleep.

Luckily the reaction wasn't life-threatening, because we ended up waiting in the waiting room for over 2 hours after the initial triage assessment. Let's just say that there were A LOT of people having emergencies last night. And let's just say that there are A LOT of interesting people in E.R. waiting rooms. I was literally to the point where I was about to just go home, because the swelling had finally started to go down a little and she clearly was still breathing, when they called us to go back.

She got a dose of a steroid -- Prelone -- and a prescription for it and after an explanation of what we should look for in case it were to get worse, we were on our way.

Of course our Sophie problems were not over, because when I took her in for her 9 month check up today, the doctor was concerned with her weight as well. In case you're wondering, she weighs 14 lbs. 2 oz. which is in the 2nd percentile. Not good. And she's only in the 12th percentile for height. In addition, he says her muscle tone is weak and when they checked her blood iron levels, those were on the low side as well. However, because of all her allergy issues, the usual measures for bulking babies up are not really an option. He sent us to the hospital lab for a RAST test, which will check for allergies to wheat, dairy, eggs and soy, and so hopefully after we get those results we'll be able to come up with a better plan of attack. Oh and also in case you're wondering, Ethan and Grace were underfoot and fighting and screaming and otherwise trying to get my attention the whole time I was trying to talk to the doctor and hear what he had to say. Fun times.


In funner news, the kids thoroughly enjoyed Halloween. Which is great for them, but the candy aftermath and sugar fallout sucks for me. Especially since Grace's birthday is the day after Halloween, and the sugar high follows along with it.

Here's the birthday girl at the beginning of the day. She was very excited about her "birthday girl" shirt -- and the tiara.

I think the expression on her face sums her up nicely.


I was glad that I could talk her into a "flower cake," made out of cupcakes. It was the easiest cake I've ever made! And in case you're wondering how I got the frosting so purple, I used NEON food coloring. I love it! The colors are so vibrant.

Here's a shot of Sophie in happier times on Grace's birthday before all the drama began.

And there you have it. The last week or so in a nutshell. I'm beginning to think life is never going to slow down!

Before I close, apparently I've been tagged. So here you go. Six random, heretofore unknown facts about me:

1. I hate driving.
2. I LOVE the chocolate covered cinnamon bears that they sell at the BYU Bookstore. It sounds like a gross combination, but its to DIE for.
3. The summer before my freshman year of high school, my across-the-street neighbor had a baby and had to go back to work sooner than expected (she was a periodontist). I went with her to work almost every day to take care of her newborn for her in the lounge/eating area while she worked. For the whole summer. And she only paid me 2 dollars an hour. To this day, I still get ticked off just thinking about how cheap that was.
4. During my senior year at BYU, my sister Emily and my roommate Heidi decided we wanted to do something to take the "South Carolina boys" in our ward down a few notches. Basically because they thought they were the crap and they really weren't. So, we planned Operation Hot Dog. In case you're wondering what that entailed, we pretty much dressed head-to-toe in black and snuck over there late one night and stuck plastic forks all over their yard with hot dogs speared on them.
5. I'm currently addicted to Costco's "Kashi: Go Lean! Crunch" cereal.
and 6. I've never been to Disneyland.

There you have it folks. Thank you and goodnight.