Freaky Morning

It's is 12:19 PM and this has already been one of the scariest days of my life. The fact that I'm sitting here blogging means everything turned out alright, but it has been wild for a couple of hours.

Annabeth slept late this morning. Yeah for me! I didn't get out of bed until 8:00. Jackson had already been up with Curtis, as usual. I got up to make breakfast before Annabeth woke up, which I was expecting to happen any minute. At 8:30 she was still asleep. Weird. I crept into her room to see if she was just playing silently and I found her fast asleep.

I went back downstairs and within a few minutes she was stirring. I brought her down to nurse her and that's when I noticed that her ear was red, hot, and enlarged. I thought maybe she'd been sleeping on it or something, but I'd seen her asleep and she hadn't been laying on that ear. She also had a red dot on her cheek, which I thought was a mosquito bite. A few minutes later I changed her position and saw that the other ear was also red and puffy. Not only that, but the back of her head was swollen. More than swollen, actually. Protruding. That's when I started to panic.

I took off Annabeth's jammies to see if she had a rash or anything and sure enough, her tummy and underarms and the back of her neck had red bumps. Surely it was chicken pox. I called my mom and she headed over to give me her expert opinion. This would be my second time to suspect it. I tried to talk myself out of something being wrong with her head. I felt sick to my stomach.

I called the doctor's office and they told me a nurse would call me back.

Mom arrived and confirmed that the back of Annabeth's head was protruding and she was very alarmed. She also didn't think it was chicken pox. I put in another call to the doctor's office and they said they'd call me back. Curtis came home to stay with Jackson. Mom thought we should just head to the doctor's office because this was not something we should mess around with. We weren't sure we didn't need to be at an ER.

We got up there and the ladies at the desk recognized that the situation was unusual and that they had two panicky women on their hands. We went to a special triage room and got to escape sitting with all the flu patients. (Which we may end up being in a few days.) The nurse hadn't seen anything like Annabeth's head before, but she thought the bumps were hives. They seemed to be getting worse by the minute.

We saw a doctor shortly after and she said that it was hives. By then, the swelling in Annabeth's head had gone down substantially but her ears were still sticking out. She may or may not have called my baby Dumbo. I may or may not be choosing to overlook that because she gave us such good news and saw us without an appointment. On the way home Annabeth was making a trumpeting sound and, without thinking, I said, "Is there a baby elephant in my car?" Forgive me, daughter! I knew not what I was saying!

Sweet, precious, adorable, angry little ear.





This is what one side looked like when we got home. It was under both arms, on both sides, in the creases of where her diaper was, on her arms, back, and stomach, and at the base of her skull. This picture doesn't really do it justice.



The back of her head after it was almost back to normal.



So the head, the ears, and the rash were all about the hives. We don't know what caused them. I'm just supposed to treat Annabeth with Benadryl. She's sleeping right now and I'll be interested so see what she looks like when she wakes up. I can't tell you how relieved I am. Seeing her head swell that like absolutely scared me to death. I really expected that we would be at Texas Children's right now.

Thank You, God, that we're not. And please help everyone who is.