Paige's stay in the hospital

The very end of August, Paige got a little cough over the weekend. We didn't think much of it, and just assumed maybe she caught a little cold. She seemed pretty much fine when she went to bed Sunday night, but then woke up around midnight, came down to our room to go potty, and then threw up on her way back upstairs. We thought ok, maybe it's a flu bug. She went back down, then woke up again around 3 am to throw up. Again, I wasn't overly concerned. It was the morning that she started to act strange. She was very lethargic, not wanting to eat or drink anything, and just wanting to lay in our bed. I thought maybe the flu just hit her hard, but then we noticed her breathing seemed odd. The more we watched, the more we realized it was very labored, fast, and you could see her whole body go up and down. I made an appointment with the doctor for 11:00 that morning.

As soon as the doctor saw her, I could tell this was something more severe than I realized. They immediately did a breathing treatment and told me "if this doesn't work, you will need to take her directly to the emergency room". Cue me starting to freak out. The treatment didn't do much, they gave me directions to children's hospital in Plano, and told me to go directly there. I had already called Ben and he left work as soon as I told him we were going, so luckily he arrived just minutes after us. I remember he asked me how I was feeling while I was driving over (while using my GPS trying to find a hospital I had never even seen before). My response was something like, "I don't have time to fall apart right now, I have to find this place and get her there. I can't cry, I have to just take care of her!" Somehow as a mom you go into super mode in these circumstances. I didn't cry. I carried my purse, Deacon, and Paige through the parking lot and hospital until I finally found the right place. It wasn't until hours later that I took a minute to stop and tear up.

They took us back and started doing breathing treatments on Paige. She was still incredibly lethargic and was such a trooper as they put in an IV, took a chest x-ray, and attached the mask to her face. She didn't cry at all.

They then told us it wasn't pneumonia (thankfully), but that she had bronchiolitus. She got a lot of mucus down in her chest and the doctors described it as the air bubbles in her lungs collapsing along with the airway in her throat partially collapsing, making it very difficult for her to breathe. She was wheezing, had a high heart rate, and low oxygen levels. They said we needed to stay in the hospital so they could give her oxygen, vapotherm, and IV fluid, and monitor her to make sure she was getting enough oxygen. Looking back, I now think she most likely had entrovirus, it just wasn't as known in Texas at that point.

So I went home and grabbed clothes, toiletries, baby blankets, an ipad, anything I could think of for a long few days. Then I swapped with Ben and he took Deacon home. To make things more complicated, I was still nursing Deacon and with not much an option, the poor kid had to get weened cold turkey. And I had to use a hospital breast pump...fun for everyone.

Luckily we had some very sweet ward members and friends (Rebecca, Jessica, Ali, Molly) who watched Deacon over the next few days, put food in our house, and brought toys for Paige. It was extra bad timing that Ben was supposed to be at his big company conference that went late each night, and he is the newest employee, so we couldn't have done it without help. We also had awesome friends and family who facetimed, texted, sent gifts, etc.

We entered the hospital Monday afternoon, and didn't go home until Thursday morning. Those few days were filled with a ton of different nurses and doctors checking on her, Paige demanding I sleep in the hospital bed with her, endless movies, Santa bringing the movie cart around, the toy cart coming through, hospital food, Netflix and trying not to worry too much. It was really a huge blessing to be at a children's hospital where they had everything geared toward making things better/more bearable for her. Ben would come see us before work and then as soon as he got off work he would bring Deacon over. He would also bring more diet coke.

We were technically in isolation, so Paige wasn't allowed to leave the room. This was rough once she started to feel better and was getting bored. This is when we discovered the joy of hospital bed buttons.

Modeling her adorable gown and socks

Tuesday she did really well during the day, so they weened her off her oxygen, but then when she would sleep she couldn't handle it. All of the sudden her alarms would go off and I would watch her numbers drop lower and lower while nurses would run in our room to check her. This was terrifying. She wouldn't wake up during it and was just getting less and less oxygen. At one point the doctor forced her to sit up and wake up so they could give her a breathing treatment. This was the first time where she just started to bawl. And I of course started to cry. It was so hard watching her go through all of it.

Luckily we had a wonderful head doctor that I completely trusted. He had us stay another day to make sure she could keep her levels up through the night. Finally on Wednesday night she made it the whole night through, so we got to pack up Thursday morning. The doctors and nurses had gotten to know Paige so well that they all knew not just her name, but her 3 dolls' names. They were so sweet to her and tried so hard to make her happy. As we were leaving the hospital they were all having a meeting and stopped to wave and say bye to her. We are also so thankful for prayer, priesthood blessings, and the peaceful assurance that everything would be ok with our little girl. It was a scary few days but made us even more thankful for our sweet, healthy kids. There are no lasting effects from this and within a week Paige was totally back to normal. We love this little girl to pieces and are so glad she made a full recovery.