A Thankful Holiday at HOME!

After 11 days at the hospital, Katie and Mommy are finally home! We had the most wonderful nurses at Inova Fairfax hospital, and we truly can't thank them enough for all they did for us. I spent all of my time there with Katie, as she needed to be watched 24/7 in case she stopped breathing. She ended up on oxygen and a feeding tube for most of her stay, which was hard to watch. She left the hospital with strict orders not to be around other children at all, and to limit her contact with other people as much as possible. Poor Uncle Matt and his girlfriend, Amy, had to shower and change clothes before they could hold her, when they came off the plane from Boston for the holiday! But she is doing better every day, and starting to finally gain back all the weight she lost in the hospital. She was down almost to her birthweight at one point, but was up to 8 lbs even when we left the hospital.

Thanks to everyone for your well-wishes and visits! Hope everyone had as good of a thanksgiving as we did!

Seriously, can we go home now???

So Katie is back in the hospital again. On Wednesday we went to the pedi to test Kate for RSV, and when the test came back positive we headed over to check her in. She has been in the hospital since Wednesday, and we're hoping to come home sometime this week. She is currently on oxygen and a feeding tube, but she's hanging in there. She is quite the fighter, and gets angry whenever she has to be suctioned out. She's quite congested, has troubles breathing, and is wheezing a lot. But we've been told that she's through the worst of the virus, and will be feeling better soon. We can't wait to bring our little girl home again!

And MORE adventures in the ER...

This time it was Jack. He has continued to feel yucky all week long, and we finally took him to the pedi on Friday where they said he had a cold and put him back on Albuterol for his wheezing. By Friday night his breathing had become really labored, so Mommy and Daddy packed him off to the ER. I think we normally would have rode it out with the nebulizer, but I just feel so paranoid after Katie ended up in the hospital last time. So after a few hours of waiting in the ER he ended up testing positive for RSV. Sigh. He had RSV last winter, as well, and we were really hoping to avoid it this year by keeping him on the Pulmicort when he developed a cold, but that didn't seem to work. I swear, if there's a bug within 25 miles of Jack, he will catch it.

We are keeping Katie quarantined in the master bedroom until Jack starts feeling better. Which means Mommy is in exile a lot of the time, but at least she's getting some sleep! We will keep Jack out of daycare for a brief "vacation" while we try to catch a break for a short time. I really hope this winter won't be as bad as LAST winter was! Thank goodness Nana is still here visiting -- I don't know what we would do without her!