a story of five: And then things took a turn for the worse...

We had a happy 2 weeks at home before things went wrong. I woke up Thursday in the middle of the night and Kaitlyn felt warm. I took multiple temperatures and all showed fever, but they were inconsistent and we couldn't find the anal thermometer so Jeremy had to run out and get one and it came back...fever. We took Kaitlyn to the Emergency Room and after back and forth with our pediatrician decided to run a battery of painful tests on her. After getting her undressed we noticed that the lump we had previously thought was just breast tissue from hormones was now easily the size of a golf ball and flaming red (which just an hour before at home had been a fraction of that size and not at all red). They took some samples and she had an unknown infection so we were quarantined in the pediatric isolation unit while they talked with the Infectious Disease doctor at Primary Children's. They took an ultrasound and found 2 small abscesses and put her on a course of heavy antibiotics. What we were told would only take 2 days quickly changed to 5-7 which then went to 7-10 and for a brief moment was threatened by a 10-14. So I spent 10 days in the pediatric isolation room. They did find out after a couple days that it was mastitis caused by Group Strep B from when I gave birth. I knew I was a carrier and had had 2 courses of antibiotics but I was the 1 in 4000 that still ended up with a sick baby. Even rarer that it took 2 weeks to show up and even rarer still that it caused mastitis. I spent 10 days stressed about the possibility of having to see a pediatric surgeon to have the abscesses drained which could have caused permanent tissue damage and watching them torture my baby by expressing fluid to keep the abscesses from growing every 4 hours and poke her daily. She also had to have a pic line put in her head since she was on such a long course of antibiotics. It was awful and I feel like I missed half of my newborn's early life. We are home now and her newborn clothes and diapers no longer fit. But she is healthy and well and today is the last day of her oral antibiotic. So I am thankful that I have a healthy baby even if it took time to get here.