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Tuesday, January 11, 2011

God's gift to moms: Mommy Gut

If I had one iota of advice to offer new moms is that you should always listen to your Mommy Gut.
Camdyn is an amazing little girl - she is full of energy and LOVES to eat. (19 pounds at 5 months!) Tuesday, December 21st, 2010 was the day of Camdyn's vaccinations. I am weary of vaccinations and I requested that they be split up. This day, she received the second half of the vaccines she should have had at her 4 month checkup. That night, Camdyn was VERY fussy. More so than usual. She always has her "witching hour" where she is tired and cranky, but I could tell she just didn't feel well. I chalked it up to being sore from her shots. The next morning, Camdyn refused to eat all of her bottle. She pushed it away after 2 ounces. She was lethargic all morning, and was very whiney. I had this overwhelming gut feeling that something was very wrong. I feared that she was having a vaccine reaction and called my doctor's office. I explained what was going on, and the nurse asked me if she was running a fever. When I told her no, she told me that kids could act fussy for up to 72 hours after receiving shots and without a fever, there was nothing they could do.
That night, I changed Camdyn's diaper before bed. In it, I found a blood-tinged discharge that shook me. I knew that this was NOT normal. The next morning, I called the doctor's office and demanded that they see us. Dr. Landis was in the office this morning. He looked at her, and thought that she perhaps had a UTI. This diagnosis required a catheter to confirm. I helped the nurses hold down my baby as they inserted the cath. She didn't have very much urine in her bladder- only enough to confirm a UTI, but not enough to also perform a urine culture to determine its cause. Dr. Landis asked us to feed her so that we could draw out some more urine. We tried breastmilk, formula and pedialyte. Camdyn refused it all. Because of his fear of dehydration, he sent us to Children's Hospital in Atlanta. Here they hooked her up to an IV, drew out more urine, took some blood and pumped an antibiotic into her. They sent us home that night.

The next morning at 4:30 am, my phone rang. A nurse from Children's was calling to let me know that Camdyn's blood culture came back positive for gram negative rods. This was not good and we needed to bring Camdyn back right away. We were admitted, and then finally told that the final diagnosis was EColi. We had to spend 5 days in the hospital. (Not exactly the first Christmas we had imagined celebrating with Camdyn!) Watching my little girl have to go through so much pain was the hardest thing I have ever had to endure. The ecoli was in her urine, causing a UTI and now in her blood; she was one sick little girl.
I knew something was wrong and had I listened to the original nurse's advice, I would have let Camdyn go on for 72 hours, and who knows what kind of damage the EColi could have wreaked in that span of time. Instead, I listened to my Mommy Gut and my baby is back to her normal, sassy self.


4 Weeks Early

From the very beginning, Camdyn has had a mind of her own!



Friday, July 23rd, my parents left to go out of town for a wedding. My mom's parting words to me were "Don't go into labor while we're gone." "Don't worry," I replied, "I have 4 more weeks until she is due!"

Sunday, July 25th started out like any other day. We had gone to church in the morning and then went to O'Charleys with our good friends, Rusty and Angie. My best friend Kelly called a little later that afternoon and together we got pedicures. We were joking that she would kill me if Camdyn came before her son, Jack. (We were pregnant together and Jack was due on Tuesday, while Camdyn wasn't due until August 21st.) At home, Bryan and I completed a few more items on our baby "to do" list. Then I settled in for the night upstairs. I was lying on the bed watching tv when I felt the urge to go to the bathroom. I stood up, and immediately, water gushed out. I thought I had just peed on myself! I went ahead to the bathroom and then picked up the phone to call my mom.

"Mom, how do you know when your water breaks?" "WHAT?! I thought I told you not to do this while we were gone!"

She encouraged me to go ahead and call the midwife and see what she thought. The midwife on duty told me to come on to the hospital. They could run a test on me to see whether it was pee or amniotic fluid that was now on my bedroom floor. The test showed amniotic fluid and Bryan and I were admitted into Northside Atlanta. My parents left Gatlinburg and came in the next morning. Labor was easy... My epidural was a-mazing. I was technically in labor for 25 hours, but I only pushed for 10 minutes.

My biggest fear was that Camdyn wasn't ready. What if she wasn't done cooking? I couldn't bear the thought of her being unhealthy. Well, Camdyn may have been 4 weeks early, but she weighed in at 7 pounds, 11 ounces and was 19.5 inches long. She was perfect! No breathing issues, no health problems.

The first moment I held her in my arms, I fell in love. Camdyn McKinley Barnes was beautiful, and our perfect gift from God.

And by the way, Camdyn was born 10:50 pm on July 26th, and baby Jack was born at 1:10 pm on July 27th. Sorry Kelly!