Israel's Hospital Stay

When Israel was 10 days old, he was admitted to the hospital because of a fever. The poor guy was a trooper through lots of blood draws, a lumbar puncture, IVs and lots of medicine. Fevers in newborns can indicate something serious, hence all the tests and monitoring.

At first it was really scary wondering if he had something like sepsis or meningitis. As time passed it looked less and less serious so I was able to relax a little. Also being freshly postpartum and getting pretty much no sleep at the hospital had me all types of emotional.

Leland took off work to stay home with Esther and Adele (it was the longest I'd ever been away from them 😢) as well as L, our foster daughter who had just arrived and was adjusting to being with us. Luckily he had his mom there to help him, and I had my mom at the hospital to help me. We were blessed with a lot of help.

 When nothing came back after all the tests the Drs told us he likely had a virus which caused the fever. After his fever broke on the second day they let us go home.

The second night we were there Leland and a brother from our ward came and gave Israel a blessing. It was Israel's first blessing and it was so powerful and always such a special experience for me to witness my children receive blessings. I believe the blessing did help him heal, as we had originally thought we would be staying another night, but his fever broke that night and we were able to go home the next day.

It is always a hard experience to have your child in the hospital, and we've done it twice now (fingers crossed there won't be another time!). I still get sad when I think about it and it was only two days. It is just so hard to see your little ones sick and in pain. Not to mention all the great medical bills we'll be hit with when we specifically had an out of hosptial birth to avoid all those bills. I'm sure it will all work out though.

 I'm grateful it wasn't anything worse and that Israel is healthy and well now. I am super paranoid about him getting sick again and I will probably make everyone wash their hands before holding him for forever.