Read part 1 here to get up to speed!

Sunday was quite a bit more work to keep Jameson entertained than Saturday. He awoke pretty cheerful, but wasn’t too thrilled about being tethered. They took him off the IV and oxygen, but both were still attached to him. We tucked the oxygen tubing in his pants to keep him from tripping over yet another cord. And he still was attached to the pulse meter on his toe.

Brian has pretty much endless patience, which is a wonderful compliment to my less-than-patient self. I’m sure he kept me calmer than I would’ve been otherwise, waiting to hear when Jameson’s nose was going to get swabbed for viruses.

There were definitely a couple times when Jameson was near inconsolable, and it was all we could do to try and bounce him in our arms (when he wasn’t trying to fling himself out of them). TV still doesn’t work on him, which I suppose is a good thing, though it certainly didn’t feel like it.

We found out later that day that Jameson was free of any of the known viruses like croup and RSV, so that was a relief.

The diagnoses? Some crazy cold virus that combined with his ear infection to cause fevers that accelerated his breathing, the mucus that may have caused the low oxygen levels, and the loss of appetite that landed us here in the first place.

Meal times was a nice short break to the endless rounds of trying to occupy Jameson in a teeny tiny space. He started eating some again, and seemed to enjoy playing with his lunch.

We also got some toys from their playroom which Jameson enjoyed for what seemed like a very brief time. He particularly likes stacking toys right now and there was one that he really enjoyed there.

Thankfully, Aunt Melissa came over later that day for a brief visit. Jameson loved brushing her hair. And his own hair for that matter; he’s very into the hairbrush recently.

She also got me out of his room for a little while. I had come in from the back when I arrived with Jameson on Saturday, so I had no idea where anything was. We went down to the lobby so I could get an official badge and walked around the cafeteria. The hospital is actually very nice, and it’s really too bad Jameson couldn’t leave his room because there were plenty of things he would’ve loved to see.

Aunt Melissa also brought some teethers for Jameson, which aside from the pacifier (woe that we discontinued it just a few weeks prior), frozen or cold teethers are the only thing that will calm Jameson down for a little bit.

She left us then with a relatively happier baby. It wasn’t long after that that Grandma and Grandpa arrived, freshly back from a weekend getaway. They were thrilled to see him, despite him wailing away when they walked in the room. We were happy to leave him in their hands for a little while and prep his dinner (and eat our own : Jimmy John’s Vito sandwhich for lunch AND dinner! awesome!).

Jameson still hadn’t drank any milk yet, but he was drinking more apple juice from a bottle. Spoiled baby 🙂

Jameson wasn’t too interested in dinner, but he did enjoy sipping water from a straw, which was cute. He kept trying to throw food on the ground, except there was no puppy to pick it up, sigh…

Around this time, our roommate was released, which was nice since we had visitors we were able to open up the curtains and move around the room more freely. They wanted to keep Jameson overnight one more night to see how he did without oxygen all night long, so I was also excited about the prospect of sleeping that night without the constant annoyance of IV alarms going off like they had the night prior.

Around Jameson’s bedtime, we chased out grandma and grandpa and tried to get him to sleep.

It was, in a word, LONG.

Brian and I sang songs for, it must have been, 45 minutes before Jameson fell asleep. And I say songs, I really mean the 2 songs that we both knew (Rock-a-Bye Baby and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star), interspersed with a couple other songs that I knew.

Jameson finally fell asleep though, and I was thrilled that he went into the “jail crib” without any problems!

He actually slept in there almost all night. It was such a relief compared to the hours we spent awake the night before. He woke up around 3, but fell back asleep on me within a half hour, and I moved him back to the crib without difficulty. When Brian arrived in the morning, we were sleeping separately, soundly.

The crib rails actually go up and down rather than the bed itself (so they can easily access babies in an emergency). It is a kind of clever set up.

We knew we would be going home in the morning, but we should’ve realized that hospitals are slow. We finally were discharged around 10:30 or so, 3-1/2 hours after we started talking about getting released. The good news is, Jameson finally started drinking milk again!

All in all? The nurses were nice. We had one nurse, Shane, who was there every day, so there was some consistency. We had very friendly lady nurses overnight. I’m sure they considered us pretty easy patients, though we felt like Jameson was anything but easy.

Shane removed Jameson’s IV when it was time to go. Jameson wailed away and then paused for a minute, watching again as he removed it.

We weren’t sorry to leave that room, that’s for sure. It was such a relief, since we had arrived expecting pneumonia and ear infection and left with nothing but a bad cold virus.

We got home, and in a couple hours we put Jameson down for a nap. When he got up, we decided to go out and run some errands rather than being cooped up in the house the rest of the day (I had been stir crazy all weekend). We stopped at the elementary school playground which Jameson loved.

He’s very into the flowers right now and has me pick them for him to hold on to. Sometimes he tries to eat the stems and I have to take them away, but the delight on his face when I hand them to him make me keep giving them.

And that’s it, a happy end to a relatively unhappy weekend. It really put some perspective on the value of health and made me feel blessed that we didn’t need to be there longer for anything more serious. Very blessed.

Last week, Jameson went to the doctor on Tuesday for his check up and 15 month vaccinations. He had a mild cough (mostly when he was sleeping) but otherwise seemed pretty healthy.

In the days that followed, he developed low-grade (99F) fevers in the afternoons at daycare which we had them treat with Advil and which it responded to. I guessed it was the vaccines or teething. We weren’t too concerned, but his cough was worsening, and finally on Friday his fever jumped to 101F late in the afternoon.

We called the doctor then, but they recommended it was viral and not to come in unless it got worse.

I can’t say that it got significantly worse, but Jameson had reduced appetite and we had seen a sign on his daycare door warning of croup, so on Saturday we opted to go in to the doctors office anyway. I hadn’t even showered yet, it being a lazy Saturday morning.

I left the doctors office with Jameson in an ambulance.

The doctor, who was not our regular pediatrician but part of the practice we go to, determined that he had pneumonia based on the sounds in his left lung and fevers. They measured the oxygen in his blood with pulse oximtery and decided that we should do a breathing treatment. His levels were lower, but not dangerously low. The treatment is typically used for asthmatics and help open the airways.

Jameson was not a fan. He was already exhausted since he hadn’t had a nap, so thankfully he only fought for five minutes or so before giving in to the mask and loud buzz of the machine. Unfortunately for Jameson, it didn’t really help oxygenate his blood, and in fact his next pulse ox measurements were lower.

We did one more breathing treatment which raised it one point. Jameson was near to falling asleep during the second round, poor thing. The cut off, the doctor told me, is 93. Normal adults are between 96-98 he said. Our regular pediatrician told me later that everyone has their own cut off. But regardless, Jameson was at a 92. And I kind of thought maybe I saw some skin darkening at the fingers and toes, so I was starting to get concerned.

At that point, the doctor recommended oxygen for Jameson and transportation to the hospital. Once attached to oxygen, we couldn’t very well transport him ourselves. We agreed. And once he was on oxygen, Jameson measured 98 and 99, which told us we had made the right decision for him.

Were I to go through this again, I would bring my own Tylenol or Advil with me. Jameson measured a temperature of 99 when we arrived at the doctor’s office and we hadn’t given him anything yet, but by the time we were admitted and settled some 4 hours or so later, Jameson’s fever reached 102 because of the delay.

I rode in the ambulance (no sirens or lights, as this was an non-emergency transport; Jameson was stable and actually sleeping), while Brian went home to grab some things. The pediatrician couldn’t give us an estimate as to how long Jameson would be in the hospital with pneumonia.

It was somewhere around the afternoon when we were finally settled. Jameson was extremely unhappy about the new nose tubes for oxygen (they didn’t go all the way in, just rested at his nostrils). It took us a few tries. Jameson kicked me in the throat and completely tore it out on our first try. Once it was in though, he pretty much gave up.

Jameson received Motrin and apple juice/water. He wasn’t interested in milk at all, but downed the apple juice.

We felt some relief shortly after as the doctors weren’t convinced he had pneumonia; they said his chest sounded clear except just a little something near the bottom on the left. But they brought an xray machine into our room to check his lungs anyway.

Then the rest of the afternoon looked something like this:

Pneumonia aside, Jameson was really tired and not feeling well, so he laid on us most of the day.

After a few hours, we determined that Jameson was probably dehydrated and so they inserted an IV and gave him fluids. I didn’t watch, but Brian said that he cried until the initial poke and then he just watched them work. Like father, like son! They took some blood for analysis then too.

Along with fluids, they gave Jameson a dose of antibiotics via IV since he may or may not have pneumonia but he definitely had an ear infection.

Later in the evening, they told us that Jameson’s xray “looked clear” (though it hadn’t been officially signed off on just yet). No pneumonia! And blood work was all normal too. As a bonus to all this, since Jameson got his round of IV antibiotics, he didn’t need to come home with any oral antibiotics. Once and done when you’re in the hospital!

Jameson’s fever hadn’t broken yet by 7 that evening, so we opted for Tylenol which did the job overnight. And that was Saturday. Phew!

Brian left late at night to go home and check on Sasha (many thanks to our neighbors who paid for Brian’s oil change and fed and let her out during our stay at the hospital).

Meanwhile, I am a little bonier than Brian (read: less comfortable) so Jameson had a hard time getting comfortable on me. Every time he fell asleep, I felt like one of our’s or our roommate’s monitors were going off. Around 3 am, the nurse said he had been weaned off the oxygen, so we unhooked him, and I was able to lay down (FINALLY) with him on the couch/futon. We fell asleep around 4:30.

Brian arrived bright and early Sunday morning to us laying there on the futon, Jameson on my chest sleeping soundly.

But… we didn’t get to go home on Sunday. Despite the fact that Jameson was feeling much better, with fever broken and antibiotics and fluids in his system. He wasn’t a big fan of confinement, I’ll say.

In some ways, Sunday was worse than Saturday. And we were still waiting to find out what he had.

[Just a note to anyone thinking that I took a lot of photos while Jameson was very ill (read: too many, like I wasn’t paying enough attention to him): Jameson was asleep for the ambulance ride and some of that scary business. For the rest, Brian or I were both there with him, rocking and holding him whenever he fussed or needed anything during his waking and sleeping hours. While Jameson won’t remember this, I certainly will, and as ever, documenting it keeps me thinking clearly and believing that everything is going to be a-okay. Which is was. Thank goodness 🙂 ]