Sick Baby Girl

Man, these last few weeks have been crazy. We have been dealing with one sick baby girl. A few weeks ago, (at the beginning of June) I had to take Callaway to work with me for a birthday party celebration...since it was my 26th birthday on the 9th and as an office we celebrate all birthdays at the beginning of each month...well, I take her to work with me and all of a sudden she is super clingy and fussy. I had my friend Stacie (she is our nurse at TLC) look in her ears. I was thinking ear infection. Well, from what we could see from the otoscope there was no infection. So, I just decided to monitor it that day. The next day, I had Michael take her into the doctor to check things out. They couldn't find anything...no ear infection...no tummy issues...nothing. Our doctor was concerned about that so he had us take these little baggies to try to get a urine sample because he suspected if it's nothing else, it could be a UTI (urinary tract infection). I must say that getting a urine sample from a 9 month old baby is practically impossible. Well, it was our anniversary , then my birthday, and she continued to have a low grade fever. Come Saturday, I was worried. So, I took her to the insta-care here at the clinic we see our family doctor. After waiting for 2 and half hours, they sent us to the ER. Waited there for another 2 hours--I was getting nervous so I called Michael at work and he came to hold his two girls who, at this point, were beyond exhausted. I told the ER doctor that she had a low grade fever since Monday evening and that our family doctor suspected a UTI so they had to put a cathader in her (saddest thing EVER). The did find that she did have some sort of UTI and they gave her shot and sent us on our way. They gave us an antibiotic to pick up and that was it. Come that following Monday, after dealing all weekend with a sad, sick baby girl, Callaway woke up at 2am shaking. She was SWEATING and I was worried she was having a fever induced seizure. I didn't risk it and we took her straight to the ER. By the time we got there, her fever was at a 103.6. They gave her another shot and said we just needed to monitor her. Tuesday we took her to our family doctor (which I love) and he said that the antibiotic they put her on, the type of UTI she had was resitant to that medication (which explains why she wasn't a happy girl). He explained to us he would like her to have some extra tests to look at structure and function of her bladder. Where she had such a high fever for such a long time, that means she had a kidney infection. Usually women have UTI's all the time but never know about it unless they get a fever (which indicates kidney infection). We waited for the initial infection to simmer down then we took her to get some extra tests. They gave her an ultrasound and some x-rays (VCUG). A few days later, here's the verdict:

Callaway has a thing called vesicoureteral reflux (VUR). This condition comes from when the urine that passes through her body gets pushed (refluxed) back up her ureters and into her kidneys. 1/3 of children of children with UTI's are found to have VUR. We have been referred to a specialist to see what our next step is. We're grateful to know what it is but the next step is to figure out what route of treatment we want to take. Worst case scenario, VUR can cause kidney failure BUT most kids grow out of it...we'll see. We're just grateful to have our happy baby back and have her on the right medication to help her.

One thing about having a sick baby, she sure likes to cuddle.

We didn't take pics during the VCUG...she was so sad. :(

After the VCUG and ultrasound, she was so tired she fell asleep with her sucker in her hands.