The results are in!

Elizabeth's EEG results came back NORMAL!!!!!

We took her to Children's Hospital on Tuesday for her EEG. We were advised to keep her up late and get her up early. I thought maybe a half hour or so would due the trick. But THEN the nurse said to keep her up until midnight and get her up at 6:00! What the what? Also, NO NAP! Crazy people.

So my poor over tired baby girl had to endure these really nice ladies coloring on her head and putting "stickers" all over the place. She actually did way better than I thought she would, but she still cried a lot. =( They brought out a little DVD player and stuck in Finding Nemo, so that distracted her sometimes. After they were done putting the little electrodes all over my defenseless little baby, they wrapped gauze all around her head. It was so sad to see my precious baby like that!

Then they shut the lights off and I cuddled up next to her. They needed her to sleep for at least 10 minutes for the test to get accurate readings. After just a couple of minutes, she was out. She was still doing the little gasps that she does after she cries a lot, but she was sleeping!

So Friday morning Nate called the doctor to see if the results were in yet for the EEG or for the stool sample that we took in last week. (By the way, yuck). Then later in the afternoon, when we still hadn't gotten a call, I called again. Yes, we are those parents. I did not want to wait all weekend for these results when they were mostly likely sitting on his desk.

The nurse started talking about how the call slip is in his pile of people to call "and the results for the EEG are here and they came back normal but the stool sample hasn't come back yet, hopefully we'll get it-"
I interupted her to say, "Wait, WHAT? The EEG came back normal??"
Nurse: "Yes it did, but the stool sample results will hopefully be back tomorrow..."

Obviously she cared deeply for those poop results (which also came back normal, by the way.)

Second trip to the ER... :(

We have been pretty blessed with Elizabeth's health. She has gotten a runny nose a few times (which most of the time I believe was from teething) and that is pretty much it. She gave us a pretty big scare when she was 10 weeks old, but other than that, she's been pretty healthy. Well now the punk has me scared.

A couple of days ago (Sept 11th), Elizabeth slept in pretty late, which is unlike her. When she finally woke up, I got her out of bed and she ended up falling back to sleep in my arms in her rocking chair. We sat there and cuddled and rocked for a very long time. She is so precious. She started to wake up so I took her to the living room so I could get her sippy cup, and she fell back to sleep in my arms again. So we sat on the couch and cuddled. Finally around 11:15 she woke up.

I asked her if she wanted her sippy or a cracker and she said, "Eat." So I got her a cracker and sat back down on the couch with her. She was sitting on my lap facing me and was holding her cracker. All of a sudden, she got super pale and super sweaty, and her eyes went blank. They never rolled back into her head or anything, they just stared right through me. I freaked. I started yelling her name and trying to get her to focus on me. I set her on the couch and kneeled right in front of her trying to get her to focus. Finally, finally she did. It seemed like forever but in reality was probably 10 seconds.

So of course this happens on a Saturday morning and of course her daddy left to go to Iowa City for a football game a few hours earlier. Lizzie's heart was racing and she seemed pretty out of it. Really lethargic. I called my mom and asked her to come over and then called Lizzie's doctor's office, which went to an answering service. They took down all of the information about what had happened and said a nurse would call me back.

While we waited for the nurse to call back, I held Elizabeth and she drank some water and ate a couple graham crackers. She still seemed sooo out of it.

FORTY minutes later, the nurse called and said she called back really quick since the notes said that Elizabeth was unresponsive. (I would hate to know how long it would have been had she not called back so quickly!) I again explained what had happened and she put me on hold to call the doctor on call. When she came back, she said that the doctor thought it sounded like she might have had a seizure.

A what now?

I decided to take Lizzie to the ER. The nurse had told us to go to Children's Hospital so I sat in the back with Liz and mom chauffeured us to Omaha. They did blood tests and an EKG, which came back normal, and they said they wanted her to get an EEG, which had to be scheduled later.

So this morning we went to Dr. B and got Lizzie checked out by her own doc. "Dr. B nice," says Lizzie. His nurse got her EEG scheduled for the first available appointment... September 21st! Now we wait.

Thank You, God

Around 6:00 am Friday morning, Elizabeth's motion monitor (AngelCare) alarm went off. Before I really knew what was happening, Nate was already running to her room.

I immediately followed him, and by the time I got in there, he had already flipped her over (yeah, she used to sleep on her stomach) was shaking her and yelling, "Baby! Baby!" and "She's not breathing!" No response. He kept shaking her and yelling, "Baby!"

I ran over to flip the light on. I ran back to the crib and realized the light still wasn't on. So I ran back and flipped the light on. I realized later that I probably opened her door the first time. Apparently I wasn't thinking straight or something.

In the meantime, Nate was still yelling and shaking her. He breathed into her mouth. Nothing. He breathed into her mouth a second time. I reached out and did about five chest compressions. Then she finally started squirming. Wow.

This whole ordeal from her alarm going off to her coming to was probably about 20 seconds. It felt like an eternity. I have never been more scared of anything in my entire life. She was pretty out of it for a while. Nate picked her up first and held her. I was shaking too bad. She was squirmy and wiggling around, but didn't cry for a while. I think I sat down before Nate gave her to me, but I'm not sure.

I fed her and changed her diaper and clothes, just wanting to keep her awake. She wanted to go back to sleep so bad, but I was way too scared to let her. She had a really weak cry for about 5 seconds. Boy was that a beautiful sound.

The on call nurse told us to go to the ER since Elizabeth wasn't breathing for over 30 seconds. They did all kinds of tests on her - chest x-rays, blood sugar, oxygen, complete blood screen, etc. They couldn't find anything wrong. Everything was perfect. By the way, she did NOT like getting her foot poked for the blood tests or getting her temperature taken. She let out some good loud healthy cries, which were heartbreaking and wonderful to hear.

I thank God that she's okay and for the AngelCare monitor. The ER doctor told us this would have been a classic case of SIDS and that this monitor is the best money we've ever spent. It makes me nauseous to imagine what we would have woken up to in the morning if we didn't have that monitor.