Door Alarm

We have been having a lot of trouble keeping Hannah from sneaking out of her room when she is supposed to be sleeping and getting into things she is not supposed to or stealing things like money or candy. Last night/this morning she took it up a notch and what we had feared would happen happened. Instead of sneaking off with my Ipod or computer or stealing candy, last night she got into a cabinet locked with a child lock, opened a childproofed lid on a bottle and ate close to a 1/4 of a bottle of Flintstones gummy vitamins as well as several candy bars from my Christmas candy stash. Thankfully poison control was able to reassure us that since the vitamins did not contain iron, the worst she would probably fare was an upset tummy or some diarrhea. While I am glad that she's fine, I do kinda wish that she had at least gotten an stomach ache to impress upon her the seriousness of her actions. For the longest time, our way of dealing with both Hannah's rages and her sneaking things/eloping was a reversed door knob with the lock on the outside of the door so that it opened when we turned the knob on the outside, but she could not get out on her own. When we started the process of becoming licensed foster care parents we were force to abandon that measure of safety we had come to depend on. Because of the potential for abuse it was just not allowed even if we weren't using it on a foster child. We considered then buying a door alarm then, but just didn't follow through. I guess we thought she'd "grow out of it" or something. I mean, seriously, what 5 year old needs to be locked into her room at night? Last night however, Hannah proved that she is just too smart and has too little self control for us to do nothing. We must keep her safe and child safe cabinet locks and manufacture childsafe bottles just don't cut it anymore. We even have medicine safes for the scarier meds, that are also kept inside a childproofed cabinet, but I'm worried she'll figure out how to get those open too. So today I went and ordered a door alarm. We MUST know when she leaves her room. She's just too stealthy without it. It's not like we sleep like rocks, but this kid is SNEAKY! It will be interesting to see how the practical aspects of having a door alarm work with also having a sleeping toddler in the house. It could lead to some sleepless nights for all concerned, but its much better than the alternative of an overdosed kid.

And, as if that wasn't enough drama for the day. As soon as I picked Hannah up from school she began melting down. She was angry about having to complete her job card before she could have a snack. After exiting the van (I can at least be thankful that she waited until we were out of the vehicle) the hour and a half long rage began. I had my first big test as a new mama of 2 attempting to deal with the rage, keep the toddler safe and his needs met, and manage the new behavior plan and holds when she got aggressive all at the same time. When Kyle finally arrived home I was soaked with sweat and exhausted and had 2 cranky children on my hands. I think I must have jinxed myself with my last post bragging about how well the first week was going.

It's funny how whenever we have good stretches of

behavior I start to doubt that there's really a problem. I think maybe I was just over reacting like so many people have suggested in the past. Then the rages hit and I remember WHY we are headed to that severe behavior clinic in a week and a half. We may have lulls in the storm, but the hurricane is still there.

My Poor Baby

I feel SO bad for Hannah. The poor thing has been run through the ringer and it just won't seem to let up. We got the OK to go off the nasty antibiotic and the diarrhea has been cut in half (episodes are now only about 1 every hour), but her poor bottom is still absolutely raw. It's to the point that it's bleeding and every time I even take her to the changing table or start to unzip her sleeper she goes stiff and starts screaming. We've been slathering it with neosporin and diaper cream about a half inch thick and I guess it is a bit better, but not better enough. My heart just wrenches each time I see that fear in her eyes when I go to change her diaper. Even with the diarrhea lessening up, about the only things I've managed to get done in the past week are wash load after load of sleepers, onesies, and blankets (Hannah goes through ALL of her sleepers at least once a day, sometimes twice!), change diapers, push fluids at Hannah, and rock her to sleep. I'm absolutely exhausted and I know I'm a ton more rested than my poor little girl. She always looks just beat. This diarrhea is really taking it out of her. It's so corrosive and explosive that it's unbelievable. Many times we can either hear or smell it as soon as an attack hits and by the time I have her picked up it's already blasted through the diaper, onesie, and sleeper and onto the floor! It seriously happens that fast. The other day we decided to give her bottom a break and let her sit for awhile without a diaper. We spread out some old towels on the floor and sat her down on them. All of a sudden a huge pool formed around her bottom. Kyle quickly picked her up to get her out of it and then a fountain erupted from her backside that shot clear across the towels and onto the floor! She got some serious distance with that poop. Changing her diaper has been quite hazardous because of this particular property of the poop. Anytime the diaper is off you just never can tell when a poop attack might shoot you, the changing table, or the floor. Once it even sailed off the changing table and all the way over to the rocker! Hannah's fever has been going up and down since she's been off the antibiotic, but it has managed to stay just below 100 degrees so the doctor says we are in the clear for now on that. We did have another vomiting incident this morning, but this time it wasn't projectile so the doctor said not to be too concerned about that either just yet. Hannah has another appointment with the doctor tomorrow and hopefully we will get some more answers and find out how to make my poor baby more comfortable.

As far as non illness related updates Hannah has learned a new way to try crawling. Instead of getting up on her hands and knees she now stands on her hands and feet with her butt way up in the air. She looks so cute doing it. She walks her hands forward in a crawling motion, but forgets to move her feet so she eventually collapses back onto the floor, but I don't think it will be long before she will be trucking right along using her new method of transportation. Apparently last night while I was out and Hannah was spending the evening hanging out with Daddy and Grandpa, Hannah had a sweet cuddle session with our cat Penny. Grandpa took lots of pictures of it and I am so sad that I missed it. She looked absolutely precious all snuggled up with the cat and Penny was such a good boy for letting her do it. I just know that she's going to be an animal lover. She just might end up being a vet or something like that she loves them so much. I don't think I've ever seen her happier than when she's petting our animals.

ER and Pneumonia Take 2

We had a very scary Saturday night and Sunday with Hannah. Hannah spent most of Saturday with Mamaw and Papaw and had a great day. She had a blast playing with them while Mommy and Daddy and Aunt Heather worked on Grandpa's house. We took her home and she was happy as a clam. When it came time for her last bottle and bed she was still in a great mood and laughing and giggling. I fed her and she drank all, but an ounce of her bottle. This hadn't happened since we cut her formula back down an ounce per bottle, but it wasn't totally unusual fer her not to take all of her last bottle. We just assumed she was tired and she was certainly acting tired. Kyle took her to her room to read her a story and sing to her before bed and no sooner had he sat down in the rocker than he hollered for me to come quick. Hannah had just projectile vomited pretty much her entire bottle all over Kyle, the chair, and the floor. The puke shot almost 3 feet! Kyle said it was like a scene from the Exorcist! I quickly cleaned up Hannah and got her changed. We took her temperature and it was 99.8. That wasn't a huge fever so Kyle picked her back up and started her bedtime routine again while I tried to clean up the floor a little bit. She threw up again almost immediately and it was projectile again and I got to witness it first hand this time. Kyle got a lot more of it on him this time so he gave her to me and went to change clothes. I got her new outfit off and was about to wash her off when I heard her having diarrhea. When I opened up her diaper there was the most foul smelling and liquidy poop I had ever seen. I changed her diaper and then took her temperature again, this time rectally which she normally hates. While taking her temp she actually fell asleep and was VERY lethargic. Like I said she really doesn't care for having her temp taking so her falling asleep was a huge red flag for us. This time the thermometer was 101.8 corrected for the rectal reading. We got her dressed and started thinking about if we should take her to the ER. Kyle decided to take her temp again under her arm after a few minutes had passed and while he was taking it she threw up again. The thermometer was reading 102 and still climbing when she threw up and the session was aborted. We cleaned her up and high tailed it to the ER. While I was checking her in and Kyle was parking the van Hannah threw up on me and my coat, but that was the last time she would vomit that night (and actually we haven't had anymore up to this post yet so keep your fingers crossed for us). By the time we actually got out of the ER waiting room and saw a doctor Hannah was burning up, but shivering since they had us take off all of her clothes. They took her temp rectally again and it was 104.5! They gave her Tylenol and Motrin and then started to do a bunch of tests to see what was causing the fever. They catheterized her to test her urine, did another awful chest x-ray on her, and then attempted to take blood for some blood tests. There we ran into a road block. Two different ER nurses couldn't get Hannah's veins so they called for the pediatric nurses to come down. Two of those nurses couldn't get her veins either so they then called in the elite special forces from the NICU to try. They ended up getting a bit of blood from Hannah's arm, but it immediately clotted from the damage to her veins and wasn't any good for the blood tests. Eventually they got a tiny bit of blood (they had to prioritize what tests to run because there wasn't enough to run them all!) from a vein in her forehead and started her IV in that same place in order to rehydrate her since she was very dehydrated from the fever and her vomiting and diarrhea. Eventually they came and told us that Hannah had pneumonia and said that that was what was causing the fever and vomiting. They sent us home around 3am Sunday with a prescription for a very nasty antibiotic cocktail and an extremely tired baby. Kyle and I took 2 hour shifts throughout the rest of the night and day giving Hannah her Tylenol and Motrin every 2 hours and Pedialyte every 20 minutes. It was exhausting, but Hannah's fever started to stay down around 8:00pm Sunday without any fever reducer and she started keeping down some formula.

Today her fever stayed down until about 10:00am and then spiked back up to 101 degrees so I had to start giving her fever reducer again because they said to not let her temp start to climb at all. She started back on her normal bottle schedule and has so far kept everything down. The antibiotic has started diarrhea very badly and Hannah's soaked through more onesies and sleepers than I can count. She's been averaging at least 1 diarrhea soaked diaper every half hour! All that pooping has really been wearing her out so she's slept a restless sleep on and off all day. I took her to see her doctor (we LOVE Dr. Hendrick) as a follow up today. The first thing he said was, "Tell me the whole story from the beginning because no offense, but I don't trust ER docs with my babies." After reviewing the ER notes and the x-ray tech's notes he severely questioned the decision made to put Hannah on the strong antibiotic. He wasn't even sure if he thought it was pneumonia given her other symptoms and if it was pneumonia he thought what the report described sounded like viral pneumonia and not bacterial which would mean that the antibiotics would do Hannah absolutely no good and only serve to keep her dehydrated. So, he ordered yet another chest x-ray and said he wanted to personally speak with the technician that read it to see if it was really pneumonia and if so what kind it was. So far the techs haven't sent him the results so we are still having to give Hannah the nasty medicine and change the diarrhea diapers, but if he gets confirmation that it's not bacterial pneumonia or even pneumonia at all he will call us tomorrow so that we can take her off the meds.

As for other Hannah updates, she has managed a few one and two step crawls since her first try, but so far she's not really figured out that she can indeed use it as a means of transportation. Today she did crawl backwards for 5 steps, on accident I think, when she was trying to sit up on her new play mat. It's a bit slippery with her sleepers on and she couldn't quite get the traction she needed and she kept sliding back on her knees. Before getting sick Hannah sampled many more table foods. She's tried chunks of softly cooked carrots, potatoes, and green beans as well as pancakes and whole wheat toast. Hannah got a new rocking chair the other day and she really seems to like it. She moves her upper body back and forth to make herself rock and she thinks that's pretty cool. She used to like doing that in our rocker and my little rocker from when I was a girl, but neither of those chairs were safe to let her sit in without being closely monitored. This new chair has a harness that keeps her safely inside the chair and specially designed rockers that keep her from tipping it over. It even has a vibrating seat which is pretty cool and we can attach a toy bar to it if she wants to play.