Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Most Sickie

This week has not gotten better. We are ready for a break! On Monday Noelle was sick. Her fever got above 102 and she felt awful. Tuesday, Rob was puking his guts up. Then, Jackson got sick...again. Now, keep in mind, although he was better from Saturday, he was still having diarrhea and his car seat had to be washed on a nearly daily basis. He was carried into daycare an arms length from Rob's body several days in a row.

But, Tuesday night Jackson went to bed around 7pm as usual. But, he woke up around 8:30 screaming. He cried for about 30 mins and finally fell asleep in Noelle's arms. He slept for about 30 mins, but woke up anytime she tried to put him down. He slept for 30 mins and then woke up screaming again. This continued all night long. Nobody got much sleep. He had a small fever overnight (about 100.5) but it grew to 102.7 by 9am. His doctor's office was able to work him in at 11:30. Noelle stayed home with him and decided they were going to get there early, so hopefully they could get in earlier.

When it was time to leave, Noelle placed him in his car seat and low and behold...he was quiet. This was a thrilling moment and she should have known there was a catch. She did a few things and went to pick up the car seat. She realized why he was so quiet and spent the next 30 minutes cleaning him and his car seat.

Once out the door, she made good time and was only 5 minutes late. Jackson's awesome doctor was out sick, so they were seeing another doctor - Dr. Wang. Grandma Stockman met them at the doctor to help out. They were called back quickly and when Noelle lifted Jackson from the car seat, Grandma Stockman noticed that Jackson had another explosion. The nurse assumed this was the reason for the visit. Haha. Nope. After going through Jackson's last week and a half, the nurse left and Dr. Wang came in. She was great! We realized that we are okay with seeing any doctor there - they are all great. It's just the office staff that is AWFUL.

Apparently Jackson's body stopped responding to the antibiotics and his ears got worse. On top of that he still has some stomach bug. Jackson has actually lost weight. He has a new antibiotic, so hopefully he'll get well soon. The doctor said it's possible he has the flu, but she doesn't think so for various reasons. But, she said there was no reason to test him because it would be miserable for him and he's too young for any medicine related to the flu. What we'd do for the flu, we should do for him anyway.

Hopefully, this is the end of the sickness for a while. Like Bethany said, it would be nice for Jackson to be able to see people again before turns 1.

By the way - I promise cute pictures are coming soon. Jackson turns 5 mo this week! I'll post one random picture for now. Perhaps this is why Jackson keeps getting sick...

Sunday, September 27, 2009

More Sickie

There's a big update to the family, but it starts with Jackson's exciting Saturday, a day filled with vomit, diarrhea, a hospital, pharmacies aplenty, and Noelle saying she has sworn off an entire city for life. If you don't want to read about liquid escaping our son's various holes, why not check out our friend Shannon's sweet story about her daughter Maddie here?

The day began early, with a sweet Jackson eating his morning meal at 4:30 and snuggling with us in our beach house bed for another few hours. (Beach house explained in a later post.) At 7:30, he didn't eat too much. He did manage to throw up quite a bit after finishing though. It mostly slimed Noelle, and it worried us because this guy doesn't really throw up much. However, the day went on, after a change of clothes for all involved, and a cleaning of the beach house floor.

Then we went next door to visit Rob's parents' beach house. (Second beach house explained in a later post.) We had some breakfast and started writing some finishing touches to a wedding ceremony. (Wedding ceremony explained in later post.) Jackson got to pose with his four cousins for a few pictures, although one of them was not technically a cousin yet. (Exp. lat.) Pic later, promise. Good times were had, but Jackson was sluggish.

10:30 was the next vomit, but it was just a little bit. At this point he was refusing to nurse or have a bottle, which is not like him. (He's not a fat baby, but he does like food.) He had about an ounce from our attempts to feed him, and he was starting to look pale. He kept drifting off to sleep and was not the lively Jackson we are used to.

Around 12:30, Rob decided to see how sluggish he really was by picking him up and playing with him. Jackson, tiredly, smiled and showed he was still our Jackson. Rob hugged him, and the floodgates opened. Vomit fell everywhere, filling Rob's shirt pocket and covering him with the white gunk, which was way more than the ounce we had fed him. The first thought was to save the beach house carpet, done by a move mid-vomit to the tile by the beach house fireplace. (It was a nice beach house, explained later.) The second thought was "What's up with this boy?" As Rob's parents scoured the carpet, Rob called the doctor's answering service to see what they had to say. He also changed clothes and was glad he hadn't been playing airplane with Jackson.

When the answering service finally called back, Rob had just finished typing the wedding ceremony in the bathroom. (It was quiet there.) He emerged to hear, "They want us to go to the hospital emergency room." Jackson hadn't had a wet diaper all day, and they were concerned about dehydration. It was three hours until the wedding started, the one Rob was officiating, (exp. lat.) and we had to drive to the other side of Galveston to go to UTMB, which had recently reopened.

Contingency plans were made, two cars were taken, and we made it to UTMB in about forty-five minutes. We checked in and eventually had a nurse take Jackson's vitals. His temperature was normal (as it had been all day), his heart rate was fine, and his diaper was now wet. But how we'll remember her would be her loving statement - "He has a big head."

We know Jackson's head is bigger than 97% of the other babies out there. His dad has a big head. He knows about it. He has issues about it. So when he is sitting next to his son, don't point out his head size as though it's something we don't know. And don't sum up your first impression of our beautiful boy by dismissing him as a big-head.

Anyhoo, we head back to a room where a medical student gave him a closer look. And once he had gone through and Jackson's vitals were looking good, Rob had to leave his wife and child at the hospital to get back to the other side of Galveston.

The medical student returned shortly with the doctor. The doctor checked Jackson out and said he definitely had something and that they needed to curb his vomiting with some medicine so he wouldn't get dangerously dehydrated. Then, the virus would work its way out of his system and he'd be able to eat again. The doctor wanted to give him a Zofran that would dissolve under his tongue, have Noelle try to feed him and then (assuming he'd eat) watch him for 30 mins to make sure he kept it down. He asked if that would work. Noelle said yes and explained that would mean they would get to the wedding right when it was starting. She immediately thought about how she would be able to take some pictures of the ceremony from the balcony and give them a view they'd probably miss out on otherwise.

Unfortunately, this is about where the day started to really fall apart. About 30 minutes later Jackson started to cry. Jackson doesn't really cry much at all, so Noelle isn't really used to his crying and HATES when he does cry. After 15 minutes of him crying he finally settled down. Noelle began hearing some bits and pieces of troubling conversation. She heard "not safe for a four month old" as well as a few other troubling comments. A couple of minutes later a nurse poked his head in and looked at Jackson. Noelle asked if there was a problem and he said, "No, I just wanted to see the baby." She let him know she meant about the medicine, but he denied there was an issue, which is when she stepped out of the room where the other nurses were. (This is the same nurse that asked, "Is this your first child. I thought so." Why do people say this!? Our doctor told us to take him in. It's not like we wanted to mess up the wedding day by taking him in for something silly.) At that point the doctor came out of a room and asked how he's done since the medicine. At that point another nurse spoke up and said they didn 't have the one he asked for, only the regular tablets, but she didn't think it was safe for a 4 mo old. He said it was not. He was trying to think of another medicine when Noelle told him she had the dissolvable ones at home. He said yes, but to give him half and not to feed him until he had it. Since Noelle was not going home, he ended up giving her a prescription.

Noelle and Jackson headed to the discharge area. While the paperwork was being finalized, Jackson had the worst diarrhea he has ever had. If you are grossed out by the word diarrhea, stop reading and skip to the next paragraph. Noelle heard a sound, looked down, and saw it begin to bubble up in front of the diaper into his lap. This happened several times within a minute. The person that was discharging Jackson called the nurse over, who didn't seem concerned. At this point Noelle still thought she would get to the wedding before the ceremony ended.

As Noelle was heading back to the beach house, she passed a CVS. She carried Jackson in to get the medicine to find the "24 Hour Pharmacy" had closed at 6pm. She asked where the closest open pharmacy was and was told that every pharmacy on the island closed at 6pm ever since Ike. Luckily Shannon was able to look up the closest pharmacy that was still open. The exit wasn't too far from Galveston. Unfortunately, in the short distance there was a wreck on 45. Once past that, the exit was only a couple of miles away. But, upon exiting, the pharmacy was far from 45. It took nearly 15 minutes to get there after exiting. Jackson screamed the whole way there.

As soon as Noelle got him out of the car seat, he calmed down. As they were waiting for the medicine, they sat down near an elderly gentleman. When Jackson missed school a couple of days last week, he was extremely happy to see his teacher, Ms. B, when he returned. Well, the elderly gentleman was a black, bald man. Ms. B is also black and bald. We think that Jackson thought this man was Ms. B and he got very excited, stood up, tried to move his body towards him and started smiling. This was something we had not seen in quite a while.

On the way back to the beach house, Jackson screamed again. At one point Noelle had to pull over because Jackson was so upset he was screaming to the point he started coughing. Of course, this took careful selection because some parts of Galveston are not safe looking at night. Luckily about 30 minutes into the 45 minute drive Jackson fell asleep.
Throughout the whole process, to add to the stress, Noelle has a new phone that she is not used to using yet, which also caused all sorts of problems.

Luckily, on Sunday Jackson was feeling a lot better! See pictures below.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Poor Sickie

Jackson had his first real fever last night. He had a low fever once before due to his vaccines. This past weekend he was a little less lively than usual, but was still a good boy. We had no clue what was to come. He started to get a little fussy and felt warm Sunday night so we took his temp. It started as 99.8 and soon was up to 102. We've had him taking Tylenol ever since, but it's still 101.8. Jackson saw the doctor today. Dr. Gonzales was off today, so he saw Dr. Chang instead. We liked her as well. As soon as she started looking into his ear she gasped. Apparently both ears are pretty bad and he also has thrush. He's on two antibiotics as well as his usual reflux medicine. Poor thing. Listening to him whimper on his sleep was hard, but nothing like what we had to watch at the doctor's office. They had to draw some blood from his finger. The nurse had us lie him down, which was a bad call since he had fluid in his ears. He screamed like he's never screamed before. Finally the nurse let me hold him instead and he actually fell asleep while she was squeezing blood from his finger. Grandma is helping out and watching him since he can't go to daycare with a fever. He still managed to give her a few smiles here and there.

Jackson - We hope you get better soon. Watching you go through this is awful!

Sunday, September 20, 2009

San Antonio

Noelle and Jackson took a quick weekend trip to San Antonio to honor Shannon and the upcoming birth of her twins. Rob stayed behind because he was hosting Chris's bachelor party. Luckily Noelle's mom joined them on the trip and was a great help.

Not only was the shower fun, but it was nice getting to spend more time with the Reynolds. The girls were as sweet and cute as ever and continued to love on and take care of Jackson.

Emily loved to kiss and hug Jackson and also liked to help buckle him into the seat belt.


Maddie loved to touch Jackson's feet and also liked to help feed Jackson.

We're so excited that the twin boys will only be 5-6 months younger than Jackson. All though it will seem like a big difference at first, we know a year or two from now, it won't see like there's any difference.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

4 Month Check-up and Shots

Today Jackson had his (slightly late) 4 month check -up and shots.

Height - 26.75 inches = 97%
Weight - 17 lbs = 75-90%
Head - don't remember = 97%

Our son is tall and has a big head. And I thought he was heavy...

He was very good for Dr. Gonzales and wasn't too bothered by the shots.
This first pic is immediately after his shots. As you can tell, he handled them well. I think he looks massive in this picture.
"Say, ahhh."He got cool bandaids for being a good boy.
Oh - and Rob discovered that he and the doc have something in common... their comic book love.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Jackson's First Owie

This morning Jackson had his first minor injury. While getting his last fingernail cut, he moved, and had a little more than just his fingernail cut. Boy did it bleed! But, I think it hurt Daddy more than Jackson.

I go and feed Jackson during lunch everyday at his school and today he was very careful not to use his left hand. It was sad, but cute. Since he has his 4 month shots tomorrow, I'm sure that this little cut will be a very distant memory.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Wedding Planning

Today we had a nice visit from Chris, Melissa and Colin. Since Rob is marrying Chris and Melissa in a couple of weeks, it was time to iron out the details. Sounds like it's going to be a great wedding and we're very excited! Jackson enjoyed spending some time with his extended family. Unfortunately, Jackson did not want to roll over for Melissa. As soon as they left, he decided to roll over several times in a row. Melissa - We got one on video for you.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Sick, runaway dogs, dead car, sick, fork stabbing, cute Jackson

Monday - Rob is sick

Tuesday - Rob is sick. In the morning before Noelle leaves, Rob discovers someone left the gate open and the dogs are gone. For those that don't know, that's how we got Ruffles. He ended up at a shelter because he got loose somehow. Luckily we found them. Noelle leaves without Rob because he decided to just go to school for his 3 classes and go to the dr in between. Jackson has an explosion in his diaper on the way to daycare. Noelle gets a call right before the admin meeting that Rob's car won't start. Despite a neighbor's attempt to jump it, it still won't start. Noelle drives home, gets, Rob, waits an hour and a half at the doctor with him, and then drives him back to school. During the wait at the dr Noelle starts to feel sick. That night Noelle's fever reaches 102.5 and she is miserable.

Wednesday - Noelle stays home from school. Her doctor works her in. Now both Noelle and Rob are on antibiotics.

Thursday - Noelle stabs herself with a fork. Yes, that's right, Noelle stabs herself with a fork. She dropped her fork and quickly went to catch it, but the booth stopped the fork, while her hand kept going. It went through her finger where it joins with the hand and although it didn't break skin on the other side, it actually went through all her muscle and bulged through to the other side. Lovely. Needless to say, Rob's first normal meal ended before it began and tomorrow might involve our 3rd doctor's visit this week.


Monday, September 7, 2009

Bumbo and Monkey






Jackson's New Found Freedom

Jackson rolled all the way from back to front last night for the first time. And the second time. And the third time. And the fourteenth time. He is very excited about his new skill and continued to do it in bed.

Now that Jackson can roll back to front and front to back he has discovered a whole new world. A world where he can get a little more of what he wants without Mommy and Daddy. A world that scares Mommy and Daddy and means that soon, Jackson will take over their household and will require childproofing.

When Jackson is put to bed, this is how he is positioned:I heard him through the monitor this morning (at 6:30 on Labor Day) and went in to get him. This is how he was positioned (midroll): Since he was entertaining himself, I went across the hall to use the bathroom and get some water. I was gone maybe 2 minutes. When I returned, this was his position:
He was happy as could be playing the piano. I always knew he liked it. I guess now we know for sure, though I have no idea how he got to it so quickly.
Oh yeah - and Rob is still feeling sick, but better.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Grandma Stockman's Birthday Celebration - And Jackson Dances

Today we celebrated Grandma Stockman's birthday. Jackson sported a new I heart Grandma shirt for the occasion. Grandma got her first present from Jackson. Little vain, don't you think, Jackson?
He also showed Grandma his birthday suit for her birthday.Having Grandma over was so exciting that Jackson didn't want to go to bed. See video below.Press arrow below to play video. It's a little longer than usual (little over a minute), but worth it.

Friday, September 4, 2009

An Important Day

Today is a celebration for two important reasons.

1. It's Grandma Stockman's birthday. Happy birthday! We love you.

2. It was 1 year ago today that we found out our lives were going to change forever. We found out Jackson was growing inside his Mommy. Ah, the miracle of life.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Happy Third of a Year Jackson

This past month has been full of new adventures for us. Jackson continues to grow in size and cuteness. He is now 26 inches long and weighs 17.25 pounds! He's a big boy. Everywhere we go people comment on how big he is. In fact, a wonderfully tactful teacher at Westside asked us about our "fat baby." And to think, I was worried about whether or not he was eating enough.

During this past month Jackson has started grabbing and pulling things... (Mary - he LOVES this football you got him)
He has started trying to chew on everything in sight. I am afraid he might be getting a tooth soon.
Jackson now laughs... (click arrow to see video below)

He is much more interested in sounds...
And he has really discovered his tongue...

He can hold himself up on his tummy...He can roll over from his front to back very well and from his back to front sometimes, but mainly only makes it halfway. (click arrow to see video below)

This month Jackson had his first fall....right after...

Not this one...

But this picture...
Sorry about that Jackson. We love you J.