November's gone and it's December

Where did November go? The weeks feel like months, and the month feels like a week. I barely kept up with posts. I was really busy, but I don't even remember what as of now. And I look back and there's not many posts nor photos. So here's another catch-up post with the most prominent things on my mind.

Sleeping Arrangements... finally sleeping through the night!

So the weekend after Thanksgiving, daddy spent Saturday making a really big "crib" for Hannah out of her twin bed. He went to Lowe's and bought 2x4's and then attached them to the wall and the bed frame (that we had decided not to use). Then he also used cardboard, padding, and quilts to make it a solid wall. We were more than ready to move her back into her own room.

Earlier (I'd written about this in previous posts I think) we had decided to move her back into our room - after we discovered her crawling around her room in the middle of the night. She had been back in our room on her twin mattress on the floor, between our bed and the wall, with the foot of the mattress blocked off, in an enclosed "cubby-ish" area. It worked very well for the first few nights, until she woke up at night and then would stare at us, whine, and pull herself to standing and tug at me at from the side of the bed. Anyways, so we weren't getting good sleep with that idea.

Since Saturday November 24th, after we moved her back into her room with her new "crib," it's been great! The 1st bit was transition, so I'd sleep with her in her bed until she fell asleep, and still do a night nursing or two (depending). Then I got to the point of nursing her, and if she was full, all needs met, but still not asleep, I'd put her down, and then leave her. She'd CIO and eventually fell asleep. After a few days of CIO, she'd whimper and cry, but she is now finally sleeping through the night! It's sooo wonderful! We've all been sleeping so much better. (Though I did worry about reduced milk supply with doing away with the night feedings.)

Some days, when she's fighting sleep, she loves pulling up and pushing the buttons on the Baby Einsten turtle attached to the head of the bed and listen to the music and watch the lights. It entertains her for a long time. It's nice now that I can leave her after nursing and just let her play with the turtle and then put herself to sleep. Hopefully it lasts.

1st High Fever - Flu? Other virus? Random bug?

On Friday November 30th, she started developing a fever in the afternoon. Her cheeks were all red and splotchy. Her eyes got puffy. Friday night, the fever measured around 100/101. We gave her Tylenol.

We had already planned a trip to San Antonio to attend the temple on Saturday. It seemed that something always came up when we tried to go to San Antonio previously. This time we had already asked C's in-laws to help babysit, and so we went even though she was sick. At the time, I thought the fever would go away, and she seemed okay. Her body had responded well to Tylenol. Though as the weekend progressed, the fever got worse. It was around 101.8 axillary Saturday night. We gave her more Tylenol.

The fever seemed to just get worse and didn't seem to respond to the Tylenol very well at night. Sunday morning she seemed not too bad. We took her to church for a little bit (kept her away from others), but then brought her home. Sunday afternoon the fever got over 102 (around 102.5) axillary (so adding 1-2 degrees would make that an internal temp of around 103-104). I was rather distraught and worried. I thought that maybe this was a reaction to the flu vaccine that she got on the last Dr's visit...but that was about 1.5 weeks ago. Her fever was very high, but not over 105 so we decided to wait it out and just treat the fever at home (with stripping her down to her diaper, washcloth on her forehead, warm bath). She'd been having a runny nose and some respiratory symptoms, but I didn't know if it was connected to her last bug, or if this was the flu or what. I'd never seen her so weak, tired, and low on energy. She didn't want to eat food. She'd munch on some Cheerios and nurse, but that was all.

We decided to see how she was doing Monday morning. She'd been running such a high-grade fever all weekend, I thought surely by Monday morning, she should be better. Sure enough, by the morning, it had become more of a low-grade fever. She measured between 99.6 and 101 axillary. I called the Dr's office anyways, and they said she'd be okay and just watch her fever to see if she got worse. I'm so very glad that her fever has come down.