There's a first time for everything...

But not everything at once please!  If you haven't noticed I've been MIA for a couple of weeks now.  Where have I been? I'm glad you asked.  It all started on Friday,  February 12th.  I had taken a few vacation days so that we could visit family in Illinois.  I strategically planned the days off around President's Day on Monday so that I could have an extra long break but not use as many vacation days.  Little did I know just how long the break was going to be.  And let me say, I would have gladly come back to work than go through the craziness Jarrod and I went through.  We left early on that Friday morning and headed over to Edwardsville, IL ( my old "stomping grounds" back in college) to visit our good friend Kyle.  We met him at one of my most favorites places in the world: Sacred Grounds, a quaint little coffee shop that I use to work at.  This place has more personality than...well, something with a lot of personality (sorry, my brain is mush right now.)  Anyway, the visit was great, coffee was awesome, Jesalyn did good. She made goo goo eyes at Kyle and drank her bottle no problem.  We left with scones and biscotti in hand, all pumped for the great vaca that was about to take place that we desperately needed. I had been sick the week before so I took Jesalyn to the doctor for him to look her over just to make sure she wasn't getting sick.  He gave her a clean bill of health, so we were good to go.  Nothing was stopping us...that is until we were 30 minutes outside of our hometown.  She woke up from her nap and decided she was not happy.  We had to stop once because she was screaming so hard her face was turning colors.  We finally got home and she calmed down for a bit.  Laughed and played with my mom and then about two hours into it started screaming again.  This time was twice as bad as the car.  She screamed for 45 min straight until she exhausted herself and fell asleep. It was so bad, we called my old pediatrician at his house because my mom was so worried.  It was the hardest thing I've ever had to watch.  She was in so much pain and we couldn't figure out what was wrong.  After giving a quick debrief on little Jesa's life the past 4 months he told us it sounded like she had a problem breaking down cow protein and told us to try switching her formula to Alimentum, aka liquid gold.  This stuff is so stinkin' expensive, but I'm willing to give anything a try to ease the pain my baby has been in.  We bought the formula gave it to her at her next feeding and it seemed to work.  Whew!  Glad we got that fixed.  Vaca is still going good.  Or so we thought.

Sunday night, she started coughing a little, but nothing serious.  Monday, a little more cough with a small fever so we made her an appointment for Tuesday with the doctor that helped us that weekend.  I knew I had been sick and I wanted to nip this in the bud so to speak, if she was coming down with it.  He swabbed her nose and told us the worst three letters in the alphabet...R.S.V.  I had no clue what it was at the time, but now....oh man!  If I could shrink myself down to virus size, we would go three rounds in the ring and let me tell you I would kick its royal butt.  He told us to watch her breathing and if it got up to over 40 breaths in a minute to come back in. I counted when we got home. It was 28, but by nightfall it was up to 42.  We made an appointment for the next day and he put her on a breathing treatment of albuterol three times daily and an antibiotic for an ear infection that had started.  Fast forward two nights to Friday at midnight. Her breathing was still pretty hard and fast, she was crying and she had had a temperature of 101.5 that we couldn't get brought down with Tylenol.  We decided to take her to the ER just to be safe.  We were there for three hours.  They weren't so much worried about her temperature but that she was in "respiratory distress."  We hadn't given her her breathing treatment that night yet, because she had been crying so much.  Apparently this caused her to get worse.  They gave her one in the er and some Tylenol for the temperature and sent us home.

As the days have gone on, she is getting better (Praise Jesus) but we ended up staying in Illinois until Monday the 24th because her temperature wouldn't stay down and the breathing didn't slow either. She had a follow-up appointment today with her doctor here and he says she's on the upside.  She's smiling again so that's a good sign.  

Oh! How could I forget.  Not only was Jesalyn sick, but Jarrod got sick the exact same day so this ol' momma had her hands full.  Thank goodness my mom was there to help when she wasn't working.  This was probably the worst week Jarrod and I have had.  This was Jesalyn's first sickness, first fever, first er visit.  What I'm look forward to now is her first recovery, and with this new formula, her first month eating with no stomach problems.  

My little sweetheart being brave: