SEVEN MONTHS WITH EVANGELINE

I can’t believe we are parents to a 7 month old, time is absolutely flying! This month has been extremely difficult as we had a four day stay in the hospital. I had taken Eve to our weekly baby weigh in and massage clinic which she usually loves. Whilst I was getting her ready for massage she started horrifically screaming and would not settle. All of the mums and staff at the Children’s Centre were shocked as it was so unusual for her to be crying like that, she’s usually smiling and so well behaved. I got her home hoping to give her some food before attempting to get her to sleep but when I started to feed her she began projectile vomiting large pools of sick covering the both of us. This happened multiple times over the space of an hour so I contacted the 111 service and took her up to the Urgent Care Centre at the hospital. When we went in to see the Doctors Evangeline was smiling away as if nothing had happened. I felt like I was lying and we were advised to bring her back if she was refusing her feeds and not having any wet nappies. We took Eve home and that evening she was sick again and was hardly keeping anything down. The next day she could hardly keep her eyes open, she had a raging temperature and I just knew something wasn’t right. I said to Paul that I didn’t feel comfortable putting her to bed for the night and as he was getting her settled for bed she went floppy like a doll and unresponsive. It was honestly the scariest moment of our lives, we called 111 and they sent an ambulance to our home straight away.

When the ambulance arrived Eve completely changed, smiling away like nothing had happened once again. I went with her to the hospital in the Ambulance and we met Paul and our parents in A&E. The Nurses took a urine sample from her that showed she had an infection and sent it off for further testing. She had a temperature that couldn’t be brought down so they decided to admit her to the ward to do some more investigations and tests. We stayed in A&E until 3am when we were finally admitted to the Children’s ward, she was only allowed one parent to stay with her for the night. She had such a difficult night as she really struggled to settle, she was only allowed to be in a nappy due to her high temperature which she really didn’t like. She was in a strange place that she hadn’t been before and had none of her home comforts that she is used to at bedtime like her Ewan the sheep and the sleep bags she would normally sleep in. They had hooked her up to a machine strapped to her toes that was constantly beeping and going off and she was under constant monitoring. She screamed all night long and I had no idea how to make anything better, I’d not managed to sleep at all and had hit a wall of complete exhaustion. The next 24 hours were awful, Eve had 4 attempts of heel pricks, 3 Lumbar Punctures and a Cannula for a daily drip that fed her antibiotics. There were so many results we were waiting for and a chance that she could have developed Meningitis so every time a Doctor entered the room we were so panicked at what the next steps would be. After a difficult few days, all of the test results had finally come back and all of this had been caused by a severe water infection. We were finally allowed to take our baby home but she needed to be put on preventative antibiotics. The next steps for us are waiting for follow up appointments, Evangeline will have to go for an Ultrasound and a procedure where they will have to insert a Catheter and use dye to see how her Kidneys and Bladder work. We will then go back to see the Doctor and the Pediatrician that worked with Eve in the hospital for a follow-up appointment in March so she will be on her antibiotics until then.

When Evangeline got home from the hospital we had to wait for her antibiotics to settle in her system before we could give her any food. She had gone over 2 weeks without eating anything which caused her to lose over half a pound but she finally had gotten her appetite back for her bottles. We were told that we basically had to start her weaning from scratch and we were eager to get her back to eating food as soon as possible. Evangeline is extremely interested in any food that Paul and I are eating so we are trying our best to have meals with her and to give her a range of different foods to try. We are trying to do a good mixture of spoon feeding and baby-led weaning and her current favourite food is the Heinz fruit biscotti biscuits and Yorkshire puddings. Although Eve wasn’t long out of hospital we wanted to attempt to get back to normal in time for Christmas. By Christmas day she was back to her usual self and she loved all of the attention, the day did get a bit too much for her due to not really getting any quiet time or breathing space. She pretty much refused to sleep due to fear of missing out so by the time bedtime came she was fighting to keep her eyes open. For New Year we celebrated at Pauls Mum and Dads house which meant that she was only asleep one room away from us. Paul took some time off from work over the Christmas and New Year period and we got so much time together as a family. We captured so many memories and photographs of moments that we will treasure forever.

And now we’re getting to seven months we have achieved the huge milestone of moving Evangeline into her own bedroom, Paul and I agreed that we would try from New Years Day and see how she got on. It was so much more difficult for us than it was for her! We have always felt very fortunate to have a baby that sleeps well at night but she had started waking up multiple times a night really unsettled which was very unusual. We tried everything from giving her an extra feed, changing her nappy, giving her medicine and teething oil. We had exhausted all of our options so we put it down to one of us doing something in our sleep that was disturbing her. Since we moved her into her own space shes sleeping at least 10 hours undisturbed a night which is an absolute blessing and we are starting to get used to having our room back to ourselves too.

If you’ve enjoyed looking at the photographs then feel free to have a follow of Evangeline’s Instagram to keep up to date with the cute baby spam.

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