bad news comes in threes

This should have been a nice well thought out eloquent post, but it's not.  I'm not one of these mothers who always looks put together, in fact, I'm that mother that mothers shake their head at.  "How does she even go out of the house looking like that?"  The type of mother that runs out in her pajamas packing her child in the carseat to take her somewhere she's freaking out thinking her child is seriously sick.

It's been a horrible week in the Joiner household.  Well if this week started on Friday evening that is.  Sophie started having some poop issues on Friday (I know this isn't exactly the most scintillating topic).  It just started out as more poops than normal and slightly acidic.  So we began putting some Boudreaux's on it and thought nothing of it, until Saturday morning.  By this time she had a horrible diaper rash, her poops were now mostly liquid with the previous meal (undigested) in there as well.  And since Saturday she has "pooped" 5-6 times a day, acidic and painful. She'll wake up from a nap or sleep crying her eyes out because of the pain.

We called her doctor on Monday as to what to do. She said as long as Sophie doesn't have a fever there really isn't anything to do.  Change her diet to help solidify the poop and watch her for a fever, but other than that, wait it out.  Wait it out?  My daughter is in pain and all we can do is wait it out?

How can I handle that?  I would give anything to take her pain away and make this all go away.  Anything.  She dreads getting changed and hates sitting for too long, it breaks my heart hearing her cry.  She even runs away from me when it's time to be changed because she knows it's going to be painful.  My normally happy cheerful baby is in pain.  I just don't know what to do.  And while it's not all day, she usually acts like herself most of the day, it's at night when it gets worse and she gets inconsolable some nights.  Like tonight, tonight was a horrible, horrible night. I  ended up packing her up to go to the emergency room because I didn't know what else to do.  I figured something was seriously wrong with her.  She wouldn't calm down, she had puked and just well I was frazzled and alone.

We ended up not going to the emergency room.  Kyle intercepted us and got me calmed down and Sophie (thank god for husbands).  We did end up talking to a nurse on the help line that our health insurance provides.  Sophie ended up having seriously bad gas, which was what was making everything worse.  but with the puking and the diarrhea I thought it was something else, but for now, she's back at home and I'm still up waiting for her to go down.  This has been a tough week for all the members in our household, even Fluffy, she hates seeing one of us in pain.

I'm sorry for such a frazzled post, I guess I just need someone to tell me it'll be alright and that we'll all get through this.  This is the first time Sophie's ever really been sick with something we can't figure out what's causing it, we're not sure if it's food or viral.

~~~UPDATE~~~

we just came back from the doctors.  She's not 100% and the doctor wants us to carefully monitor her for a fever, but that Sophie is hopefully through the worst of it.  She's positive it is viral, and that most viral illnesses run their course in about a week, and that Sophie is almost at a week, so she should start feeling better.  But if she doesn't, her pediatrician said we'll need a stool sample (a dirty diaper) for next Friday to be sent in for salmonella and other testing.

I think what helped me the most was hearing that we were doing a great job and that we clearly were doing everything we could for Sophie and that everything we had been doing for Sophie was the correct thing to be doing. I think I needed to hear that far more than I realized.  Her pediatrician is the nicest lady around and always brings me out of the clouds when I'm freaking out.  I don't know if she remembers, but she was actually my pediatrician as well (probably why I like her so much).

thank you for all of your well wishes and sweet thoughts for sophie, here's to hoping that she'll be this happy next week!