Briley's 6 week appointment..

Briley had her 6 week appointment last Friday, February 21st. At our 2 week check up the doctor asked us if we wanted to come back at 4 weeks and 8 weeks OR if we just wanted to come in the middle and do 6 weeks. To eliminate having to go to the doctor two times (when they were giving us this other option), we chose 6 weeks (not even thinking..) So...we went to her 6 week appointment and she looked great and everything was going well. She was 11 lbs, 10 oz, measuring 23 inches long. She ended up getting 4 shots (1 oral and the other in her thighs). Well, we knew what would probably come next..she would be sleepy the rest of the day and would have a low-grade fever (just like Tucker). So.. we left the doctor and got Tucker ready to go to the circus with my dad and Tammy. They were taking him for his birthday - and he had SO.MUCH.FUN!! Jonathan and I decided to go eat somewhere and do a little birthday shopping while we had the time (without the birthday boy)..so we ate at Panera Bread and then just went to Walmart. Briley, of course, just slept the whole time - which is what we expected since she had just gotten her shots. Well....... we got back home and were just hanging out, waiting for Tucker to get home and she felt a little warm so I decided to take her temperature. It was 99.9. Completely normal after having shots. As we were watching tv and just hanging out, I was trying to wake her up and feed her.. she was having the hardest time waking up - so about an hour after we took that first temp of 99.9, I decided to take it again. It was 101.5. The doctor told us that anything over 100.4 is what they needed to know about. She had also told us NOT to give her tylenol because she was only 6 weeks old (which I will get to in a minute..). So .. I immediately called the doctor and it took about 10 minutes for someone to call me back. As I was waiting, I checked her temperature again.. it was 102.1............I started freaking.out.!!! When the nurse called back I told her what was going on and she said that because her fever was over 102 we needed to take her to the ER. We waited for Tucker to get home (he was almost there) and then we left and took her. When we first got there, they sent us to a family room so that we wouldn't be around all the germs in the pediatric waiting room. The lady in triage who took Briley's vital signs (blood pressure, temperature, etc) was so sweet. She could sense the fear on my face (maybe because it was coming out in a liquid form!) and she gave me a heads up as to what they "might do" since she had a fever. She said "now just to let you know they COULD and MIGHT draw blood, put in an iv, and could even run "other" tests"..I said ok and thanked her for giving me a heads up. She gave her tylenol - GO FIGURE! and we were then immediately taken back to a room. If we would've known that they were going to give her tylenol, we could've done the same thing at home - but our dr was adament about us not giving it to her.. Anyway - the ER doctor came in and started asking questions and we made sure to tell her she had JUST gotten her 6 week shots today and proceeded to tell her what was going on. They made us put her in a little gown and then wanted to start running tests. One of the very first things they explained was that they were going to do a chest xray, take some blood, and then they would be doing a spinal tap. The doctor said, "the risk is that we could introduce an infection that wasn't even there in the first place.." Jonathan and I both looked at each other and I just had this uneasy feeling.. When the DR went out, we started discussing it. I strongly feel like it was the Lord that laid a good friend of mine on my heart. I immediately said "I've got to call Alyson Weimar". Alyson is a pediatric nurse who used to work at wake med but now she and her husband and 4 kids are on the mission field and are stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville. Even though it was 12:30 at night, I texted her. When she didn't answer, I called her. I didn't leave a voicemail but she called me about ten minutes later. She said she was up anyway because they were at Camp Caraway with their youth for the wknd. Anyway..I started telling her all that was going on and told her we needed help. I asked if this was your child what would you do? She immediately told us to tell the doctors to take it one step at a time. The doctors were trying to follow protocol (of course, as they should!) but were wanting to do everything quickly and all at once. Alyson suggested waiting to see if her fever responded to the tylenol, having them do the blood work first and seeing if there was any abnormalities with that. She said she could then be admitted for observation if she needed to before deciding if we needed to do the spinal tap. Now.. don't get me wrong.. I'm not 100% against a spinal tap - and will do one if we ever need to - HOWEVER - Jonathan and I both knew that she had JUST gotten shots that day and we strongly felt like it was nothing other than her little body having a higher fever due to the vaccines. The DR's and nurses there couldn't understand that and kept trying to push so hard for us to sign the papers to do the spinal tap. In the meantime, Alyson had a close friend who was working that night and she texted her and told her to come find us. She did - and she reassured us that we were doing the right thing - and that's what she would do with her child, too - spinal tap would be the last resort. So...I was so thankful for her. Briley's fever started coming down (Praise the Lord) and she started eating again - just like normal - because she was starting to feel better. They did the bloodwork (which was painful to watch - because it was through a little IV - and all that came back normal. Because of that, we decided NOT to do the spinal tap and to follow up with our doctor the next day. Her fever never got back over 100.4 the next day. We monitored it constantly and (it did go up over 100 one time) but we gave her tylenol and, within 36 hours of her having the shots, it didn't come back anymore. I must say I am BEYOND thankful for Alyson Weimar and her friend for encouraging us and walking us through that whole process. Again, I am NOT against spinal taps - but I did not want to risk any kind of outside infection or just have them do it for no reason - when we felt so strongly her fever was just due to the shots. Also - we have talked to many people since then (even a few doctors and nurses) and they have all questioned why she had her shots at 6 weeks and not "2 months" (or 8 weeks). I was able to look at Tucker's records and he got his at 6 weeks as well. Even a close friend of mine who works with children had a chart from the CDC and it shows that it is recommended for babies to have those shots at 8 weeks.. so these are definitely questions I am going to take to my doctor when we see her at 4 months. (ACTUALLY, we changed and we are gonna have Briley start seeing the DR Tucker normally sees just because we already like her and have now had this bad experience with the other one..) I'm also going to ask her about the tylenol part - because we gave Tucker tylenol at 6 weeks but she was adament that we didn't need to give her any ... but then that's the first thing we did when we got to the ER.. go figure! Jonathan said it sounds to us like our doctor owes us our copay for the ER :) Anyway - I am just so thankful she is ok.. you can imagine that there was lots of prayer time and constant communication with the Lord that night. I am so glad He laid Alyson on my heart so we could talk through what was going on and get that reassurance from her. We understand that the DR's have to take themselves out of the situation and just follow protocol (that's what Jonathan does for a living, too, so we totally get it) - but sometimes you just know your child and your specific situation and I am thankful that we listened to our gut and didn't make any rash decisions that night. Hopefully she WON'T ever need a spinal tap.. but especially thankful she didn't need one last Friday ..