First cold

Lily has her first cold ever! Two nights ago she was up all night crying with a stuffy nose which isn't so unusual. We gave her some tylenol because it seemed a bit worse than usual. She then proceeded to throw up mucous (yuck, i know) all night. That was obviously from having swallowed so much drainage from lying on her back :( Poor baby. So I took her to the doctors. They rushed us in the back - have I said how much I LOVE our pediatrician - so that Lily didn't catch anything else in the waiting room. Turns out Lily has a virus that is going around, nothing crazy, and of course, nothing we can do about it. She did get a slight fever of 100.1 but not enough for us to use a stress dose of hydrocortisone (three times her normal amount) thank goodness but we had to watch it carefully.

Today she seems much better. She's eating and drinking well and even though she still has the snot nose, it doesn't seem as bad and I don't hear as many sneezes. And you know what, everyone keeps saying how amazing it is that she is almost 8 months and this is her first cold. I owe it all to breastfeeding I think! See how amazing it is? My child is proof! She has been in and out of yucky, germ infested hospitals her whole 8 months and this is her first cold! Yay for breastfeeding and passing on the best nutrients and antibodies :)

While we were at the doctor we also checked Lily's weight. Unfortunately it's only at 14lbs 3oz which is like a 2 ounce gain over the last month. I explained what she's been eating and the doctor assures me that she is getting plenty of calories. Just another thing to bring up to the GI doctor when we go in two weeks. We'll get another weight check there and then we'll see if we need to switch up some medicines or do some dietary changes (boo.) Only we can go in for a cold at the doctors and come out talking about GI doctors! *sigh*

Another thing we discussed - see, again, I LOVE our pediatrician. She never rushes us even when I come in for same day appointment and then bombard her with questions and concerns that are pretty major! - was the social security appeal. Yes, I am going to appeal, like I had planned. I just needed some great friends to remind me that this is what I had expected and not to get derailed because the letter hurt my feelings. (Thanks LK and Jill) So, I have asked my pediatrician who has been there from the beginning and has seen ALL that we went through from birth to our diagnosis and afterwards, to write a letter explaining all that has happened. I am also going to ask all the other specialists, many of whom had said they would write whatever we needed to help us out. The geneticist is a big one because she specializes in midline brain abnormalities and can write down what we will be expecting to face in the future. The opthalmologist is a big one too, though I'm afraid it will take time to get a hold of him and ask him to do this, but he can explain that she does indeed have small optic nerves and what this will mean for her future.

So, that will be my goal next week...to at least try and get in touch with all of Lily's doctors and ask them to get on that since we only have a limited amount of time to appeal.

In the meantime though I am going to nurse my pitiful sick baby (literally, she loves to nurse during the night when she's sick - I was up almost every hour nursing her!)