Poor Sickies

Well, our luck in the health department has finally run out. Poor Lillian caught something nasty. After everything we've been doing for the past 8 months to keep their exposure limited, who'd have guessed that family was the flu culprit?


After a lovely holiday with my family, we went to DH's folks' house Christmas evening. Right after we arrived, we learned that one of our nephews had been throwing up throughout the day. And of course, there he was, getting up close to the babies, wanting to play. At 9:00 at night.


Needless to say, we were livid! We would have skipped the 2.5-hour drive and gotten together some other weekend had we known. Our preemies are still on sick-germ restrictions until they get bigger and we know they won't wind up back in the NICU. But no one called us - everyone wanted to see babies.


So, we didn't stick around too long, and took our girls over to DH's brother's house. It's in the same town, so it was a simple fix. My M-I-L that she wanted us to stay there so that she could show our babies off to her daycare parents who'd be dropping off their kids the next morning. She apparently forgot the doctor's orders to limit germ exposure for the first year. It would be one thing if we were able to dump our kids off in a big daycare with all kinds of other kids and pay a lot less, to boot. But that's not how it works. That's why I spend an hour and a half in the car each day - to keep our girls in a safe, less germy environment.


The next morning, they insisted we stop by for brunch. When we arrived, we learned that the puker's brother had picked up the bug, and spent most of the night praying to the porcelain gods. And yet, there he was, hanging out with the rest of the daycare kids. We got out of there in a great big hurry.


Sure enough, poor little Lillian woke up just before midnight and puked and puked and puked. She was miserable, and course, so were we. We kept her in a bassinet in our room so that she wouldn't disturb her sister (or infect her if by some chance she had been spared). DH called his family - at near midnight - to let them know how furious he was that Lillian was sick. His dad told him to mellow out because it would probably be short lived. That just added fuel to DH's fire. He kept saying that it would be one thing if they'd called and we decided to risk it anyway. That it would be one thing if the girls were full-term and big. Lillian just doesn't have any extra weight to lose. I tried reminding him that no one set out to purposely infect our babies. "Ooh, they don't have enough to deal with now that the babies seem healthy - let's see if we can put one in the hospital." They just didn't take the reality of our situation seriously. It will take him a long time to get past this.


Breanna soon followed her sister's pukey path last night. It was an easy decision to keep them home today. I didn't want them to infect anyone else, so we called our daycare grandma to let her know they wouldn't be coming. She appreciated the consideration.


We'll see how tonight goes. Keep your fingers crossed for us. In the meantime, here are a couple of photos from about a week and a half ago when they were clean and healthy. Lillian is the one with the tongue.