Life has been very busy and I am just now getting around to recording about Mariella's hospitalization at Children's. Since this blog also serves as our family journal, I didn't want to ignore it even with as much as I wanted to.
If you take a look beneath Mariella's left eye you will see a purplish bump.
She was born with that bump and we asked every health professional we saw in the hospital about it. Everyone assured us it was a bruise or a blood blister and that it would go away. (Wrong!) A few days later we noticed that the bump and surrounding skin was turning red and was becoming very swollen. I decided to take her to Children's Hospital Urgent Care because what other urgent care would know what to do with a week old baby? The doctors there were concerned with the infection and admitted her. It is quite a shock when you are told that you're not going home, you're going straight up to a hospital room on the Infectious Diseases Unit.
The first day at the hospital Mariella had all sorts of needles poked into her so that the care team could determine what infection she had. OK, so she really only had 2 needles but it seemed like a lot! The lumbar puncture was the worst for me (and Reed. He actually had to leave before he fainted) although Mariella was an absolute trooper! She looked so pitiful when they strapped on the IV to her little hand but she was so calm through the whole thing. Luckily for us the YM president in our ward is a pediatric ophthalmologist and contracts with Children's Hospital. He called Reed to see if he could help out and diagnosed the problem OVER THE PHONE! He knew exactly what the purple bump was- a blocked tear duct that 1 in 100 babies are born with and, if they are not treated, 100% get infected. He told Reed that he would come the next morning and fix it in 15 minutes.
Mariella screamed through the whole procedure, but let me tell you, it is soooooo much easier watching your little baby go through all that when you know the person doing the procedure and it's someone you trust. "Dr. Dave", as I found out he is called, did a wonderful job and we will be forever grateful. Her eye was very swollen afterwards but by that evening I could already tell that it was 100 times better than before.
Now, 2 weeks later, you can't even tell that anything was wrong with her! This photo is actually from a day after she came home from Children's so it even looks better today :)
Hindsight is a killer in situations like these. I wish that I had listened to Reed when he suggested that we go see Dave in the first place, a few days after she was born. I wish that I had insisted that we go to the eye clinic first, BEFORE subjecting Mariella to a lumbar puncture that wasn't needed. I just have to remind myself that Mariella is fine and things turned out all right. I am so grateful that Reed was able to give Mariella a blessing and also for all the prayers that everyone was saying for us. A special thanks to my Mom, who drove an hour and a half to spend time with me in the hospital before turning right around a few hours later and driving an hour and a half back to the farm.
Now we have a beautiful girl with two beautiful eyes that can now be fully open! I am sure there will be a lot of pictures to come :)
