Thursday, December 31, 2009

Wow What a Month!

What a crazy month this has been for the Counts family! On December 1st we brought home our beautiful baby Nicholas. We had a wonderful time readjusting to meeting the needs of our growing family. Curtis has been an absolute joy and took to his brother immediately. He has also been fantastic at adjusting to a little less attention! We are so incredibly proud of him!

Our beautiful Godson Charlie Lawrence was baptised. Thank you Kelly and Jacob for allowing us to have such an awesome responsibility!
We had a wonderful Christmas and enjoyed great time with both sides of the family. Mass was absolutely gorgeous and the boys were darling in their Christmas outfits that Mommy shopped for for months! Curtis got some pretty cool presents...here is one of his favorites from his poppop coacher and nana!

On December 26th Nicholas's little cough wasn't so little any more and we took him to our pediatricians office. Come to find out he had RSV and Bronchialitis. The doctor warned us that it had been a terrible year for the virus and there were a whole lot of cases of it going around. Less than 8 hours later we ended up in the emergency room at Texas Children's Hospital after watching Nicholas struggle to breathe and nurse. We were admitted into an emergency exam room where Nicholas was deep suctioned and given a breathing treatment. Unfortunately, the breathing treatment was unsuccessful and his oxygen levels were dropping by the minute. We were admitted at three in the morning and Nicholas was hooked up to all sorts of machines to monitor his oxygen levels and also placed on continuous oxygen via a nasal cannula. We all tried to get a little bit of sleep while keeping one eye on the machine at all times. He did okay through the night but every time the doctors tried to ween him off of his oxygen his levels dropped instantly. All throughout the next day he stayed on his oxygen and maintained relatively stable oxygen levels. During the night (Sunday) he had a really rough patch where he was really struggling to breathe and was unable to nurse or catch his breath. His oxygen levels dropped even though he was on continual oxygen. He pulled out of his distress on his own and we breathed a sigh of relief. At eight in the morning he went into distress again but this time much worse. He began to wheeze and his breaths became short and quick. He was unable to nurse and his cries turned into whimpers. The nurses ran around and tried to deep suction him to no avail. We called for a respiratory therapist who had a little more success suctioning him and then we tried a breathing treatment which thankfully worked this time. After an hour of watching our sweet little guy struggle he appeared to be doing a little better. Needless to say we got five star treatment after that and doctors and nurses flooded in continuously to monitor his breath sounds. Our doctor kept telling us it was "really good" that she could still hear breath sounds in his lungs! That didn't sound "really good" to us! His oxygen was cranked up even higher and he continued to have breathing treatments every four hours to make sure he didn't have another attack. By the next night he appeared to be turning a corner and was finally able to maintain his pulse oxygen on his own. We were discharged on Tuesday afternoon and sent home with breathing treatments every four hours for at least another week. Turns out that adults are susceptible to RSV also and Jacob and I most likely have it as well as we came home with head colds. Curtis ended up with a double ear infection which our pediatrician believes is from RSV as well. What a week we have had! Praise God that Nicholas is doing better and we are so thankful for all of our friends and family for all their help and prayers! Thank you a million times to my mom for taking rounds at the hospital to support me while Jacob came home to give Curtis some stability. Thank you to Dad, Jan and Daryl and Barrett and Jessica for helping out with Curtis while we were away! We are so blessed!
We ended the month with Curtis's 3rd birthday! No party this year seeing as we got out of the hospital only the day before but we did have some brownies and candles(thanks a million Tommy and Kelli!). So hard to believe that our big guy is three already! We absolutely do not deserve such a loving little boy but are so glad that God blessed us with him! Happy New Year everyone! We will spend it catching up on sleep...given the excitment of the past few days none of us will have our eyes open at midnight that's for sure!

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