Not at All Wordless Wednesday

Some of my peeps have {wordless wednesday} posts on Wednesdays, but I have pharyngitis. I'm supposed be avoiding talking, but I have a lot going on and a lot to say. Talking and swallowing is darn right painful. So if I can't talk about it... at least I can blog about it.

Monday I squeaked out my words all day long as a part of my job, mostly spent on the phone. The inability to produce much sound makes work horrendous, but I had to stick it out. My partner worked for me Tuesday so I could rest. I think he even felt sorry for me. Heck, I feel sorry for me! Kevin and I both got appointments with our friendly nurse practitioner Tuesday. We have a lot of the same nasal, coughing, and sore throat symptoms... but he can talk just fine. Kevin was deemed to be viral, but mine could have started out viral and turned bacterial... so I get antibiotics along with my slew of decongestants, mucus thinners, pain relievers, numbing lozenges, etc etc etc.

Cough, cough, cough. Moving on to Miss Hannah. She's had a snotty nose, productive cough, off and on low grade fever, and general grouchiness for a week. Throw in at least one puke session per day and teething pain and that equals one not so fun week to be parenting this child. I called early this morning and arranged for a 3pm peds appointment.

But, we had a 10am appointment with the opthamologist to check for retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). All babies less weighing less than 1500 grams at birth or younger than 32 weeks' gestational age at birth are at risk of developing ROP. It involves abnormal retinal vessels that grow mostly in an area of the retina where normal vessels have not yet grown. Serious stuff, as it was once the leading cause of blindness of children in the United States. Generally, more than fifty percent of premature infants weighing less than 1250 grams at birth show evidence of retinopathy. As our daughter was born at 28 weeks weighing 1180 grams (2.6 pounds), she is obviously at risk. Her eyes were checked multiple times in Taiwan, and all we every heard was that things were fine now, but she would need rechecked again.
At today's appointment with our local opthamologist, they gathered information about her birth history and used a series of three drops to numb and dilate her eyes. I laid down in the exam chair with her on top of me. I held her hands down while the nurse held her head and put the drops in her eyes. There was a lot of screaming and wiggling going on, and then a lot of fussy boredom as we had to wait for the drops to work. Interestingly, I was told that it is harder to dilate dark eyes than light eyes. Something about how the dark eye soaks up more of the medication, and it can take 2-3 sets of applications before the eye dilates wide enough. Miss Hannah required two applications. The opthamologist took measurements of her eyes and looked at them closely, and said that at this time there is no evidence of retinopathy of prematurity. We're to return in a year for a recheck. I tried to ask how long, as in how many years, we'd be returning for rechecks... but because of my lack of voice I couldn't get my question across and the doctor was gone. Oh well. Doesn't matter. I'm feeling very blessed that this is more more issue that I can cross off my list of worries.

We went home for lunch and a nap, and then went back for a appointment with our pediatric nurse practitioner for the grouchy sick baby. She hadn't been pulling at her ears or acting like they were painful, but my suspicions were that she could have ear infections and maybe even a sinus infection that were at the root of all of this. Guess Mama's not too dumb after all. One ear was definitely infected, and the other didn't look too great either. Because she's had this going on for a whole week, Hannah gets a round of amoxicillin (just like her Mama!) as it's likely to be bacterial as it's hanging on so long. Daddy went to this appointment too. We talked at length about the refusing of bottles and rejecting anything on a spoon. The nurse practitioner tells us that she's trying to tell us that she doesn't want bottles anymore, and wants to feed herself, and it's okay. If she doesn't want a bottle anymore, we can go to whole milk in a sippy cup. We're supposed to stop worrying about how much she's eating or drinking. We're to offer her a variety of nutritious food and offer her something to drink multiple times a day... and if she doesn't want it... it's okay. So... I'm supposed to stop freaking out and start dicing food. (Hear that, Baby Whisperer?) This is hard. She's just so little... it's hard for me to let go of my baby that takes a bottle and let her eat spaghetti if she wants to. I only got a couple of months of a baby, and here comes a toddler!

My little bird takes her amoxicillin like a champ. More praises! Cough, cough, cough. Where's my cough drops?