Murphy's Law...

...rears its ugly head. As soon as I posted my last post about how Maddie has thankfully managed to escape the illnesses that plague this house, she comes down with RSV!! We had a pretty rough weekend. Jacob finished his last day of antibiotics on Friday (prescribed because of the sinus infection he was diagnosed with 2 weeks ago). Well, Saturday night he was up all night long complaining about his ears. The poor kid couldn't sleep lying down. We knew he had another ear infection (almost inevitable given how sick this kid has been). We made an appointment on Sunday morning with CareNow which is a clinic that sees patients 7 days a week. Since it was Sunday, we couldn't get in to see our regular pediatrician.

In addition, on Saturday, Maddie's runny nose and congestion turned into a massive wet cough. Since we are all supposed to be flying on Thursday, we decided to have them both looked at on Sunday. Sure enough, Jacob has a double ear infection. But, more surprisingly, they tested Maddie for Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and it was positive! We were totally not expecting this. This is a very serious infection especially for babies under 6 months. I was beside myself. We now realize that Jacob has probably been infected with RSV all this time, but it only presents itself as a bad cold in older children and adults. In infants, it can greatly inhibit their breathing due to the enormous amount of mucus that is created from the illness. Surprisingly, the Doctor at CareNow prescribed an antibiotic (even though it's a virus and can't be treated with an antibiotics) and a steroid for Maddie. Mark was very leery about giving such a young baby this kind of medicine and when we got home, he put a call into our pediatrician's office so that he could talk to the on-call Doctor. The on-call Doctor basically said that he did not agree with this course of treatment and that we should have taken the kids to Cooks Childrens Hospital from the beginning. Awesome. So, Mark packed up Maddie (while I stayed home with Jacob) and took her over to Cooks to get another opinion. Sure enough, they said that since it's a virus, we need to just watch her closely and take her in immediately if she starts having difficulty breathing.

So, we are at home now paying attention to every breath little Maddie makes. She's sleeping in her carseat next to our bed so that she can be upright (to help clear her head so she can breathe) and so that we can be extra close. Jacob is doing much better on his new antibiotic and we hope it wipes out his ear infections quickly. This probably means that me and the kids will not be traveling to Chicago, but we're waiting to hear what the pediatrician says at our follow up visit tomorrow.

If the kids finally do get healthy soon (which I pray for), I certainly am not going to write about it. Because that darn Murphy's Law will come back to bite us every time...