Alive and... well?

February tried to take us out, for real. 

At least one of us was sick at all times this past month and we are just now getting over (hopefully) the last of it.  It started near the end of January... Ryan caught a cold. He never gets sick, maybe like once every few years, but this time it was his turn. Maddie caught the cold from him, except had much worse symptoms... The poor thing couldn't sleep or breathe well, waking up coughing every few minutes for a couple nights and then was just plain miserable for about a week. I felt so bad for her :(  Next it was my turn, a cold is never fun but its especially not fun when you're super pregnant. Can't take any medicine or even use menthol cough drops so you're pretty much left hung out to dry. It took me about a week to get through the worst of it and right around Valentines Day we all started feeling pretty good again. Soooo Maddie and I went out to pick up a Valentines day card for Ryan and some ingredients to make a good dinner and she unknowingly picked up the nasty flu virus that is going around Idaho right now... "Influenza A" aka FLU OF DEATH. Maddie got off pretty easy with this one though, thank God!!! She had a fever for a couple days and lost her appetite but other than that it wasn't too bad - didn't even require a doctor's visit! She recovered quickly and was back to her normal, inquisitive self by that Friday afternoon. 

My poor sick baby, exhausted from sickness #1:

On Saturday we went to pick up a new loveseat that was on sale at Fred Meyer that we've had our eyes on for a while. We needed more seating in our living room and it was just the right size, color and price! Literally in the 30 minutes we spent at Fred Meyer I developed the precursory cough that comes with this particular flu virus and by the time we got home I was hacking away and feeling lightheaded. I tried to ignore the symptoms and went to bed early but by Sunday morning I knew I was coming down with something... Woke up just totally uncomfortable - couldn't really pinpoint what was wrong just felt very "off". Took my temperature and it was about 100 so then I realized I was getting sick and not just feeling the normal aches of being 29 weeks pregnant. For a temperature when pregnant, you can take Tylenol so I just kept up on that all of Sunday and drank lots of fluids. But as I'd been warned before, catching the Flu when pregnant can be dangerous and just overall more severe as your immune system can have a hard time fighting it off when its working for 2. As a scare tactic to convince me to get the flu vaccine, my OBGYN told me that they've actually had several pregnant mamas die this year from the flu and being unable to fight it off - so of course I was more than happy to get the flu shot ;) I got it back in September so I should have been covered but apparently this particular strain of flu wanted a go at me despite all that... ha!

Anyway, I woke up Monday morning around 1:30am with a 102 fever (which I knew was getting a little too far up there for a pregnant lady on Tylenol) and couldn't really sleep the rest of the night. The chills/night sweats/total bodyaches were just too intense... I called my OBGYN when they opened that morning and they asked me to come in right away. Luckily, it was President's Day and Ryan was off work, so he packed me and Maddie up in the car and took us to the doctor's office. I couldn't even sit in the waiting room, just feeling like I was going to pass out so they ushered me back to an extra room with a couch so I could lay down until a doctor was available. The doctor checked me out and found that in addition to what she guessed was the Flu, the high fever had made me a little dehydrated and both mine and baby's heart rates were racing and she felt uncomfortable sending us home. She called the hospital and let the Labor & Delivery Dept know that we were on our way over for evaluation, fluids and testing.

After getting settled at the hospital, Maddie's Grandma Karmen came to pick her up; thankfully she was available, we were there all day and Maddie would've lost her marbles after about an hour. Three different nurses tried to get an IV in me a total of 5 times but each time after much poking, twisting and shoving of the needle, my vein would burst and they would to take it out & have to try again. They were never actually successful at getting an IV in me, but because I wasn't feeling nauseous I just ended up just drinking a bunch of water rather quickly instead. Then came the blood tests, flu & strep throat swabs and chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia. Once the tests showed that it was just the Flu as we all suspected, they kept me in isolation and put this big yellow sign outside my door warning anyone that entered needed to be in full paper scrubs, gloved and masked :P They were mostly monitoring our resting heart rates at this point and were wanting them to come down before letting us go home. When we got there, Baby's heart rate was going at about 190 and mine was at 160. Normal for us is 155 and mine at 85. They discharged us around 6pm; Baby's heart rate was back to normal around 160, although mine was still at 140 but they were sure it would come down once my fever broke - which it did that night and could literally feel my body start to relax as it lowered. Anyway, after a pretty rough Monday, the rest of the week I just kept feeling better with the medication the doctor prescribed and now am completely over it a week and a half later! So glad to be feeling better; Pregnancy can be pretty miserable at times but having the flu on top of the typical third trimester symptoms was by far the most miserable I have felt in a loooong time.

 

We are all currently healthy, fingers crossed it stays that way from here on out! We have barely over 2 months before we officially become a family of 4 so I'm really going to try to keep the germs to a minimum for the next short while.... And by that I mean constant handwashing, an excessive amount of handsanitizer and limiting our exposure to obviously sick people and high traffic places LOL 

Maddie and I will now run/waddle a victory lap around our freshly disinfected house to Kelly Clarkson's song "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger", take an extra dose of vitamins and hide from the dirty, germy world for the next 3 months. 

See you all in June ;)

For now, I'll end with few snaps from some of the better moments February had to offer:

28 weeks, officially in the 3rd Trimester!!

 

Ryan picked up Maddie's new favorite movie, Trolls, the day it came out. She woke up to this surprise waiting for her on the kitchen table and she immediately had to watch it... breakfast was served on the couch!  I wish I had a video of her reaction, she was SO excited.

 

I was cleaning out the desk and found this old gem... a list of words that I left for my parents when they watched Maddie for the day. She was just learning to talk, not quite understandable yet, and she'd get sooo frustrated when people couldn't figure out what she was trying to say:

  

She's developing her own style... LOL

  

Playing at the Dentist's office... she was so brave getting her teeth cleaned and x-rays done!! 

Proud of her.