Mrs. Smith's Words of Wisdom

Our Very First ER Trip

So it wasn't nearly as fun as it sounds. When we were in Little Rock in March for our "family wedding pictures" with Melissa & David we went to the old Albert Pike Hotel downtown for some pictures with the happy couple. As you can see from the group picture below (taken by Summer Williams) Miss Millie was not very happy. As a matter of fact, she was very sick. She wouldn't let anyone get near her, but me. You would think this would be endearing, but it was actually extremely exhausting. She was running a low grade fever off and on for several days and getting up in the wee hours crying. We'd get up and she'd guzzle a huge sippy cup of cold water, take some baby medicine and the fever would break, and sometimes fall back asleep. I figured it was just a bad cold. Well, when we were in the old hotel doing pictures, we pretty much let her do whatever she wanted to appease her which included standing on top of a huge radiator thing and looking out the window. Harmless right? Well, she was putting her mouth up to the glass as she was looking out which was probably not the best thing to let her do, but we were desperate for her to stop crying. Fast forward to pictures finished and we're back at Bryan's grandma's packing up our things to head back to NWA. Millie is playing on the floor and I look down to see that her top lip looks a little red and swollen. I take a good look at her and assume that she must have bumped it. I let her return to playing. I see her again after a few minutes and it's even bigger. I go to lay her down and look in better light and see that both lips are swollen and her top lip is HUGE. It almost touches her nose. We scoop her up immediately and get in the car to go to the ER. Luckily we're in Little Rock so we head to AR Children's Hospital. To make a long story a little bit shorter, we basically tramautize our sweet girl by pinning her down for a rectal temp and thorough exam from the doctor. He gave her Benadryl right there and said that not only was she dealing with this weird allergic reaction, but she had severe ear infections in both ears and an upper resp. infection. Well, no wonder she was acting so fussy! I felt so sorry for my sweet, sweet girl. She was asleep by the time we were out of Little Rock and slept for the rest of the way home and through the night. She got better pretty quickly, but it took us a long time to calm down from the scare of the reaction and taking her to the ER where the doctor told us that we came right when we should have because mouth reactions can be bad if they get into the throat and close up the air passage. Thank God we didn't just blow it off like we usually do! Eeks! Above is our little fat lipped girl sleeping it off on the way home after the swelling had gone way down. :o(