?Reflux?

Here is one of our first pictures together as a family. It is less than glamorous, considering Ben is sweating and I'm in sweats. My mom wanted to make sure she had a picture of us before leaving to go back to Washington.

On a totally different note, let me address the title of this post. Last night we had a pretty scary experience. At about 7 o'clock we were all sitting around the dinner table when we noticed Emily making strange sounds and weird faces. Then, all of a sudden, she made what the Dr.s classified as a "wheezing" sound- but was more like an inward squeaky gasp that said "I can't breathe." Scared me to death. She had one bad episode of it and then did it a couple more times. Needless to say, we were immediately on the phone with Providence Pediatrics after hours service. They said we should take her down to the CMC Children's Emergency room. We've been there quite a few times with Anna, but this was our worst experience by far. The waiting room was packed. Packed with sick, vomiting, hacking, feverish older children. And one kid who fell and busted his head. We hid out in a corner until we could be seen. The rooms in the back were so full that the Dr was coming out in the waiting room trying to triage people. Emily ended up with a chest X-ray (to make sure she didn't aspirate anything) and a diagnosis of "reflux". This can be particularly scary in infants because when they reflux they can actually stop breathing. Anna had reflux, but the kind that spews out and is more messy than anything. The silent reflux is more sinister because it can come up in your throat unnoticed until you breath it in and choke. Baby's can also easily aspirate and get pneumonia. So. After 6 hours at the hospital, we finally made the drive back home at 2am. This was particularly hard on me because I haven't really been outside the house since my surgery, except for Emily's first check up. We were there so long that all my medications wore off- not even an ibuprofen in my system by the time I hobbled my tired, worried, surgically recovering abdomen out of there.