Getting ready for Christmas this year was especially fun. Eleanor was really excited to help decorate the house, which included moving around the various pieces of the Nativity scene every day. We went to see Santa and successfully got a picture of both girls on his lap. Grover, the Elf on the Shelf, visited us for the first time. We made sugar cookies, gingerbread men, and our first gingerbread house. We added Lydia's stocking to the mantel (which is about 3 times bigger than the rest of our stockings), and the girls wore their first matching Christmas PJs. Overall, it was a lot of fun. Derek was still recovering from his surgery in November, and I had to have surgery a week before Christmas...never a dull moment in the Prosser house, but we survived. We spent Christmas Eve at my parents with Robert, Stacey, Kate, and Preston, and then my parents came over on Christmas Day.
Lydia graduated to using the Bumbo seat and pretty much wants to stand all of the time. When not trying to stand up, she still enjoys laying on her playmat and staring at the mobile. Just before 3 months, we stopped the middle-of-the-night feeding, and she was doing really well sleeping until almost 7am.
After Christmas, we started getting ready for our trip to Florida with Derek's family. We were set to leave on Jan. 3. The Monday before we left (Dec. 29), we noticed that Lydia had a cough. It started to get worse, so I took her in to the doctor on Wednesday just to make sure we were good to go for our trip. The doctor said that she had RSV but that she was breathing fine and that we should be ok to leave. We were supposed to just monitor her, keep the humidifier going, etc. She did ok that night, but her fever spiked on Thursday, and while giving her Tylenol, we noticed that she was really struggling to breathe. We threw everybody in the car and went to urgent care, where we spent about 2 hours testing her breathing and giving her Albuteral. They said her breathing was right on the cusp and that it wasn't low enough for the hospital to admit her, so they were planning to send us home. They decided to test her one more time while she was sleeping, and her numbers dipped pretty significantly, so it was off to the hospital we went. The ER took us back, put in an IV, did a chest x-ray, and did some breathing treatments. She was so miserable (and so were Derek and I). They ended up getting us a room by Thursday night. She was so sad to see with all of the wires hooked up. They had her on oxygen and fluids. She wasn't interested in eating at all but seemed to be sleeping better. Derek took Eleanor back home to start getting things ready for the trip. We were hopeful that we would be there maybe a day or two and then get released. Friday came and went with no real progress. She was still on oxygen and not eating much. The doctor basically said that until she could get through an entire night with no oxygen, she would have to stay at the hospital. We made the decision to have Derek and Eleanor head out to Florida while I stayed back with Lydia. Eleanor was so excited to go and see everyone that we didn't want to cancel the trip. To make a long story short, we were in the hospital until Monday afternoon. They had tried unsuccessfully to wean her from the oxygen on Saturday, and ended up having to increase it, but by Sunday evening, she seemed to be doing better and made it through the night with no oxygen. The bad part about RSV is not just when the virus is active, but that the effects of it last for so long. I'm pretty sure that Lydia battled a significant cough for about 4 more weeks after we were discharged. I've never been so happy to get out of the hospital.
We had to go to a follow-up doctor's appointment on Tuesday, and once he gave us the all clear, I ran home, threw a bunch of stuff in a suitcase, and Lydia and I headed for the airport, where we flew to Miami, rented a car, and drove until about midnight to meet everyone in Marathon. It was a crazy few days, but I'm so glad that Derek's family got to meet her. Because of my surgery and Lydia's condition, we kind of laid low at the rental house for most of the time, but I think the humid air actually made her feel a little better. Eleanor had a blast, and the weather was perfect.
We all made it home safe and sound (despite the Miami airport's effort to make us miss our flight). Then it was back to trying to retrain Lydia on sleeping in her crib and not waking up every few hours. (She had to sleep elevated for about 2 weeks to help with her breathing, and because people were in and out of our room every few hours, she got used to waking up again.)
