I am DONE with hospitals!

Shortly after the reunion was over we were at my aunt's house and the cousins were playing. There were still a number of family around after the main activities were done so we went up there to visit. After we got home (which was about 9:30pm) we got a phone call from my aunt saying that when Grandma had gone downstairs to go to bed she found her pills scattered everywhere. YUP, the kiddos had somehow gotten into Gma's room and then played with her pills and sure enough one was missing. It was one of her heart pills and when my cousin had called poison control she said to get them down there right away. So we loaded up Preston and Hadley and met them down at the ER with Kirk Allen and Kamilla, my cousin's two toddlers. They put us in a huge room and took all of their vitals and when the doc came in he listened to their heart and said that they were all fine and if any of them had taken a pill they would be able to tell by now. So the four toddlers, one baby (I couldn't leave her at home) two moms, two grandmas, and Josh loaded up and finally made it home to sleep. On Tuesday Ethan went in and got his tonsils and adenoids removed, they put a tube in his left ear, and trimmed something in his nose to give him a bigger passageway. He was a trooper and was excited to get the procedure done. We learned through a hearing screening at the school that he couldn't hear very well out of his left ear so when we took him in to the audiologist she did another test, looked in his ears, and called in the ENT doctor right away. Ethan has never had a problem with ear infections, I think he has only ever had one. The doctor told us that often times you don't notice the hearing loss when it is in one ear because as a child they just learn to compensate for it with the other ear.

So he is all fixed up now and after the first day he told us that he could already hear way better out of his bad ear. He was rather pleased with that and we are glad that there was no permanent damage. He has been a good patient and is eating lots of Popsicles, the only thing he doesn't like is when we have to irrigate his nose and I don't blame him for that one.

The day that my mother left to go to Utah and then on to Cali we ended up in the hospital again. That night (Friday) I put Preston in the bathtub. Aubrey was being a little needy but started playing in the mirror that is in the hallway. She was being so cute, talking and smiling and even laughing at herself. So I decided that she could play in the mirror in the bathroom while I bathed Preston so i cleared the space so her little paws wouldn't find something that they shouldn't and then put her in her bumbo right close to the mirror. Preston and I were watching her while she was in the bath and we were talking to her and she was having a blast. Well I had to wash Preston's hair so I turned around and right when I was finished I heard the worst sound ever!!! It was a sound I don't ever want to hear again and I knew exactly what it was. My little girl's head just hit the ground. Since she was so close to the mirror she had pushed off with her feet and tipped herself over backwards off the counter, bumbo and all. I scooped her up and comforted her. She had a pretty good goose egg right away but I was able to calm her and she was responding and smiled a couple of times. I also checked her eyes and she seemed ok. She wouldn't let me put her down, but she wasn't screaming. I got the kids in bed and Aubrey eventually fell asleep and I had read that if you can console them and they seem ok then they are probably fine. Josh eventually got home from work and I gave Aubrey to him and she woke up SCREAMING. At that point we couldn't console her and then I looked at her head and now it was really swollen on both sides, we knew we had to take her in.

We took the other kids over to Josh's dad's house and headed for the ER, we had just been there two days before. She finally fell asleep on the way there and did pretty good once we got there. She was fussy and crying but no longer screaming. They gave her a CAT scan and they saw that her skull was fractured in two places and it looked like there was some bruising. The ER doc called the neurosurgeon in (at about 2:00am) and he thought that we would have to go into surgery. She had bleeding on her brain. They decided that since quite a bit of time had already passed since she fell that they would wait a little bit and then do another CAT scan an see if the bleeding had increased. So we had a horrible night in the ICU waiting, and holding Aubrey, and eventually got about 1 1/2 hours of sleep. We took her in for another CAT scan first thing in the morning and were so relieved when the Neurosurgeon told us that it hadn't grown. She had to stay in the ICU for another 24 hours though so that they could watch her and make sure. But by that afternoon she seemed to be back to her old self and we got to come home.

They had a tiny hospital gown for her and everything. She had to be hooked up to monitors the entire time and had an IV too. MY POOR BABY!!! I was glad that we had such amazing nurses and everyone told me that it was ok and that these things happen. I was glad that I wasn't getting the opposite response, I definitely felt bad enough. She had the worst two bumps on her head but they are almost gone now. We have to go back into the neurosurgeon in a couple of weeks to make sure that everything is healing ok. She is rolling all over the place and is almost sitting up on her own. Let's just say that what use to be my favorite baby item now makes me a little sick to my stomach to look at. And I am definitely done with hospitals for hopefully a very long time.