Hives

Friday I stayed home with the two little littles and took Ezra to the doctor for his 15 month check up. (Why, yes, he did turn 16 months on Sunday...barely squeezed in there, but I did it!) He did great! He let Ms. Jennifer check him out with no problems as he was mesmerized with her stethoscope and ear check thingy. When it was time to check his mouth he opened his mouth right up and let her look in. She actually joked that we should video it because kids just don't do that well for a check up at the doctor. I joked that it's probably because we play doctor a lot around here with Daddy's fire department. He got his shots and an antibiotic since he had an ear infection in the right ear and fluid on the left. And we were on our happy way.

That night Ronnie came home, Ethan got off the bus at home for the first time and we had a fun night at home.  Ezra acted fine, but he developed the hard, red spot around the injection site from earlier.

Saturday we rode down to Concord Mills for a bit and enjoyed some time at the fire department party for the kids. At some point during the day I noticed Ezra had a few small, red dots on his cheek. They looked like little bug bites. I thought it was strange, but I wasn't concerned. I also noticed that the spot on his leg was getting bigger, but it still looked pretty normal for vaccination side effects.

Sunday we got up and went to church. Well, we were late. I should note that I was washing clothes for us to wear, (someone who should be potty trained goes through a gazillion pair of underwear a day!) and this must have been the sign that the washer and dryer were getting ready to die on me, (as they did on Monday...different story) since it took forever for each machine to do it's job. I know, I know. You truly have your act together when you're washing clothes a few hours before you need to wear them.

Anyway, let's make a long story longer. After church we went to my parents' for lunch and when my sister got there (nursing student, yay!) I had her look at Ezra's poor leg. She said if it wasn't better by Monday, she would take him to the doctor. At the point he had a few spots around it, but nothing major. We left there around 3.30 and went home. I took a nap, the boys played outside with Ronnie.

I woke up and went to pee. While doing so, Ronnie comes flying in to tell me that we had to go to the emergency room. What?! I just woke up, and I'm trying to pee and you're carrying on about the hospital? I'm confused. Explain to me. He tells me that Ezra looks awful. Turning red all over. I check him out and he looks pitiful, but I really don't want to spend $300 on an ER copay. I called his regular pediatrician and was told to give him Benadryl and if he wasn't better in the morning to call and bring him in. No problem. Wait. Why would I have Benadryl? I'm ever prepared so I send Ronnie to Wally World to pick some up. With the groceries. And swing by for takeout. As you can tell, I wasn't extremely concerned.

Ronnie got home and Ezra took his new medicine like a champ, but he kept getting worse. The spots were getting bigger and more numerous. And he was really starting to look bad. 





These were taken before he got worse. But after the Benadryl he continued to get redder. It was really sad. I sent these pictures to my sister and she demanded that we take him to the hospital. Ronnie thought we should go and I agreed. We dropped the older littles off at their grandparents' and we headed to the ER.

At the ER, we were rushed into the back and checked out quickly by triage. Apparently a red baby is serious. We were told the next bed available belonged to us as we were sent to the waiting room. We only had to wait about 10 minutes before we were called back to the big room with a glass wall and curtain partitions for bad cases. We were worried, but we knew God would take care of our baby no matter what was wrong with him.

Turns out that he's had a reaction to something. No one knows what since he was previously exposed to everything that he had eaten or been given. The scary part is not knowing what to avoid in the future, but we're thankful that the Lord watched over him and that this case wasn't as scary as it could have been. Now he looks bruised, but he's getting better and he doesn't act like it bothers him. And that was how my first experience with hives went.