What a Weekend

So, Cayden had his first "illness". Thursday he seemed okay, a bit fussy, but okay. Thursday night he just would NOT settle. He seemed to be in pain with gas or something, but just would not sleep. I think we both (Cayden and I) got about 2 hours sleep that night. Friday morning, Cayden felt like he was burning up, so I took his temperature. 101*F. He continued to be pretty fussy. Acting like he wanted to feed, but everytime I latched him on he would fall right to sleep. I went ahead and went to my breastfeeding support group on Friday. I figured since there was a health visitor there, I could ask her about his behavior and see if I could give some paracetamol (acetaminophen). She told me it was okay. He slept through the entire thing! Woah. That's unlike Cayden to sleep that long. I figured it was because he didn't get much sleep the night before. I came home and prodded along. Feeding him when he wanted fed, trying to cuddle him when he cried, trying to figure out what was wrong. 6:30pm comes around and I change his diaper. Alarm bells ring in my head, red flags waving in front of my eyes. A green, pus-like discharge sitting in his diaper and coming off his privates. I immediately called cuedoc (emergency doc services for out of hours clinics). They called back and said to bring him in. So, I called Sue (mother-in-law) told her the story and asked if she could take us through to the hospital.
We get to the hospital and we're seen pretty much straight away. This is unheard of! I was shocked. I get in the room. Tell the doctor what's happened and she wants to look him over. So I undress him and get him on the table and she starts looking around. She sees a little bit of this discharge and asks me about it. I tell her it's the first time I've ever seen anything like that. She asks me some family history questions and then starts checking Cayden over more. He didn't want to settle so she asked me if I wanted to (and felt comfortable) latching him on for a breastfeed while she finished checking him over. I agreed. She wanted a pee sample off him. That was fun. While I was feeding him she got a silver foil bowl ready to catch the urine in. She turned her back for two seconds and there he pees right on the table. She caught a teeny tiny bit, and tested it. Full (4+)positive for blood and half (2+) positive for leukocytes. She wasn't happy with that. She said to continue feeding him and hopefully he would have another wee soon. We got another tiny sample off him. She tested it again and the same results on the dipstick. She tells me because he's so little she wouldn't feel comfortable sending me home with antibiotics without getting him checked out first. She called pediatrics and they told us to go right up.
We got up to the ward and I talk to the pediatrician. He tells me he wants another wee sample so we continue trying to get one, while he's talking to me. He tells me that the plan is for him to be admitted to the ward and stay at least overnight. I was okay with overnight. He then proceeds to tell me that they take UTIs very seriously in young children as they could be the result of something a bit more serious and his ideal choice of treatment would be IV antibiotics for 48 hours, so he would have to be in the hospital for at least 48 hours. I wasn't happy cause I wanted to take my baby home, but I understood that that was what needed to happen. The doctor left the nurse and I to catch a 'clean' sample in the dish. One time of him peeing all over me and a teeny tiny sample later and I got to take the sample to the desk. They told me we would have the results Monday.
Friday night, the nurses just checked his vitals really and kept an eye on his temperature. I was wondering why they hadn't started antibiotics but they didn't really tell me why. We got up saturday morning and Cayden vomited after a feed. It wasn't like normal spit up, because he was boaking and his stomach was contracting, it was awful to watch. He was also very pale. The nurses came in and said it was time to start his antibiotics and they needed to put a cannula in his hand to do so. They assured me that the people that do this are very good at what they do and they have done it many times, and asked if I wanted to be there or if I wanted to stay behind. As much as I knew it would kill me, I wanted to go. So we went into this small room which was the side room to the pediatric O.R.. The nurse practitioner started looking at his hands and said he wasn't blessed with good veins (thanks to his mother), but pricked him with the needle and started trying to get the cannula in. He SCREAMED. It broke my heart so much to see that, that I started bawling. One of the nurses handed me a tissue and the nurse practitioner continued trying. She couldn't get it in his left hand, so she tried his right. After trying for 15 minutes, getting it in well enough to get some blood for the blood tests and Cayden screaming, she gave up and said she would have the pediatrician do it. So, we wait. The nurse comes and tells me it won't be too long, the staff had just been called away for a cesarean so they'd be back after that. A while later, it was time. The pediatrician said that I should try to feed cayden while she was doing it to try and calm him. That didn't work. He didn't want anything to do with me once they started poking him with needles. The pediatrician wasn't too nice about that. She said "Mum, I gave baby to you to feed him. He's supposed to be feeding. Get him to feed". She was foreign so it was hard to understand her at the best of times but getting scolded while your baby is screaming his head off isn't a great feeling. She finally got the cannula in and flushed it out to make sure it was working properly, then gave him the antibiotic. He pretty much fell asleep after that. When he woke up he was grumpy, and wanted to eat. He did fine for a while. Then I started putting him to bed at 8, got him to sleep and in bed at 9 and at 10 the nurse comes in to wake him up and put his antibiotics in his IV. Because he's a baby, they had to wrap his arm to assure the cannula stayed in and there wasn't a chance of it being pulled out. So, they had to unwrap him (he's swaddled when he sleeps) unwrap his arm and give him meds. He didn't like that - so I had to do the whole put him to bed process all over again. I got him to sleep and went to sleep myself. I must have been super sleepy because the nurses came in every two hours and I didn't hear them at all. The only time I woke up was when I could hear Cayden ratching for something to eat. I got him laid back down and asleep and I went back to sleep only to wake again a few hours later to the sound of him ratching for food once again. The nurses were deathly quiet, cause I didn't hear them once.
Sunday morning is here and Cayden is pretty grumpy. The doctor comes in and says he's pleased with the progress Cayden is making and tells me the rest of the plan. The plan is to continue IV antibiotics until Monday when they can get the urine culture and blood test results back. He will go for a renal ultrasound on Monday and if it comes back clear he will be discharged with oral antibiotics. He is super fussy on Sunday, but every time he acted like he wanted to eat he would fall asleep in my arms. I didn't get him to sleep and in bed until after 11 on Sunday, and he woke at 3am and again at 5:30am. Wasn't too bad. Not like I was sleeping very well on the rock hard bed they gave me to sleep on anyway.
This morning is here and first thing the head nurse comes in and tells me they're ready for Cayden down at the ultrasound room. I take him down there, undo his onsie and pull it up so the sonographer can get to his tummy. The sonographer puts some gel on the tinyest wand I've ever seen, puts it on Cayden's right side, clicks a button, puts the wand on Cayden's left side, clicks a button and then puts the wand on Cayden's tummy just below his belly button and clicks a button. he looks at me and says "everything looks normal there". In a matter of five minutes I had walked to the ultrasound room, had the ultrasound done and was back in the room on the ward. It was quick! The doctor came in and said that the tests came back conclusive of a UTI so we would give oral antibiotics twice a day for seven days, and then start a prophylactic course of antibiotics (once at night) until he's seen at a later date as an out-patient for more tests. He tells me the two tests he would be doing would be injecting dye into Cayden's veins and then looking on ultrasound to see how his kidneys function then, and the other was to put a catheter in, inject dye into his bladder and make sure that none of the fluid was retracting up the ureters (urinary reflux). He told me that we would continue the prophylactic antibiotic until Cayden has these tests done and if the tests come back all clear we could then stop the prophylaxis, if they came back positive then we would get further instructions. They took the cannula out of his hand and he screamed while this was happening. But was fine once it stopped bleeding.
We got to come home at lunch time, and I can tell Cayden was happy to come home. He wasn't nearly as fussy (still a bit - but its to be expected) and he went to sleep at 8:30 and hasn't woke yet (and won't get woke by a nurse trying to take his temp or give him meds). I hope he has a good night sleep tonight (I know I need one!)