Sick Spooks

As I mentioned before, once my parents left and Jason went back to work we all fell apart. When we left the hospital little Landon was jaundiced and since we left right at the 24hr mark (Friday the 22nd) we had to take him to our pediatrician’s office the next day to repeat his blood test. The pediatrician thought he was still a little yellow but that it should get better as long as he kept nursing and pooping. Sunday rolled around and Landon hadn’t pooped since Friday. So I called the on call Dr. and since he was jaundiced they instructed us to bring him to the ER if he didn’t have a BM by 8:00 Sunday night. I had to nurse him every hour to try to get him going. The whole day we were eagerly monitoring his diapers. When the clock reached 7:45 I was starting to panic thinking I was going to have to load up my 3 day old and head to the ER. So I resorted to the advice of friend…let’s just say it involved a rectal thermometer. It worked like magic! We all cheered and I cried as he finally had an enormous BM right at the 8:00 mark. We laugh now about how happy we all were over baby poop. (oh the joys of parenthood!) (I’m including pics throughout that may not match the text but I’m just trying to keep you reading)
(being born so close to Halloween Landon had about a million Halloween outfits. I had a hard time getting him in all of them before his first trick-or-treat.)
 Jason went back to work on Monday and my parents left as well thinking that we would all be okay. I survived Tuesday and Wednesday on my own with all the boys. Then Wednesday night I started having sharp pains on my right side. I initially blew them off all day Thursday and just thought it was delivery related. Until I started to get way worse. I couldn’t keep anything down and my side pain wasn’t letting up. So my OB recommended I should go to the ER to celebrate Landon’s one week b-day. I made it until Jason got home from work and we headed to the ER. Luckily my younger sister was already flying in to help us for the weekend so a neighbor watched R & W until she could get there. Thankfully I didn’t have appendicitis. I was dehydrated, had an infection and a bad tummy bug. I started feeling much better after all of the fluids and zofran they gave me. Unfortunately I wasn’t going to be able to nurse Landon for 48 hrs because of the dye they injected into my IV for the CT scan. So Jason and I had to stop at CVS at midnight on our way home to figure out formula. I think we looked pretty silly standing in the aisle reading all of the labels not knowing what to buy. I was so worried that once Landon figured out how easy a bottle is he might not go back to nursing. He did fine, I just had to pump and dump every three hours and feed him formula too.
Once we were home from the ER the bug attacked every member of our family one by one over the next week. Wyatt was the first to go down, followed by Rhett then Jason and I was lucky enough to catch it a second time. (I’ve always been an over-achiever…ha!) We seriously wouldn’t have made it through the weekend without Julie. Bless her heart she spent her whole trip cleaning up our bodily fluids and she swore she would never come back again. I don’t blame her It was brutal!
Somewhere during all of the sickness we did manage to bathe the newborn.
Halloween finally arrived and with the help of Julie and all of our neighbors we had a terrific time. We started the day by taking Landon out to eat for our first family of five outing.
W was still getting used the idea that it’s been 10 days and this baby hasn’t left yet.
Then we put on our costumes and had our annual neighborhood chili party. We had so much fun! R was BoBo Fett.

                

W was a monkey and Landon was his banana.

I remember when R was W’s age and how much fun trick-or-treating was because he figured out the concept. Once W got a few pieces of candy he just wanted to ride in the wagon and eat them. He was the cutest little trick-or-treating monkey.

R was such a good big brother to help him along the way.
We are so lucky to live where we do with all of these great neighbors. The kids always have someone to play with.

R & W had such a great time and I bet you’ll never be able to guess whose candy pile is whose…haha! Thankfully operation lose the baby weight hadn’t started so I was able to indulge in all of the yummy goodness of Halloween!

After Halloween was over I had to face the reality that Julie was heading home as well. We dropped her off at the airport and everyone in the car cried all the way home (except R). I’m pretty sure we were all crying for different reasons and little did I know at the time that my adventure with three boys was still going to get a little worse before it got better. I’ll leave you with that little teaser for the next post. I’ve also got Landon’s newborn photo shoot headed your way so please come back soon!