Ever since the beginning of the year, I have been looking forward to Easter weekend. A friend announced that she was getting married the day before Easter. The wedding is four hours away in a very small town. About 30 miles from the town is a very nice resort that I wanted to experience. I made reservations for four days at the resort and looked forward to going on our first vacation as a family. The resort offered an Easter Egg Hunt and pictures with the Easter Bunny. As a new parent, this was something I desperately wanted to experience. With the stress of having a newborn in the house and the stress of that newborn being sick for two months including a five day hospital stay, the whole family needed this vacation.

A week before the trip, Andrew contracted the flu but the doctor seemed to think that he would be well enough to travel by Friday. He responded well to the Tamiflu and did improve but his old respiratory symptoms that he has had for the last two months came back. We took him to the doctor and decided to cancel the trip. I was disappointed but I will always do what is best for my family.

The weather for Easter weekend was lovely and Andrew was feeling better. I was determined to find an Easter Bunny to take pictures with. I looked in the paper to see what events were happening. The one that really caught my eye was a Easter Egg Hunt at a farm about 20 miles from the house. After running our Saturday errands, we drove out to the farm. On the way, I saw an Easter Bunny waving at drivers at another farm that sells plants.

We got there about 30 minutes before the Easter Egg Hunt and I realized that there were way too many people here for me to try and battle them all with infant in toe to find eggs. We opted to eat the hot dogs and walk around a bit. Andrew was fascinated with watching all the kids rooting around for eggs and I got a couple of nice pictures. The announcer kept talking about an Easter Bunny but all we saw was someone in a chicken outfit. It did not look like we were going to find a bunny to take pictures with. I certainly did not want pictures with an Easter Chicken.

I said to Jen, “Let’s go back to that roadside Easter Bunny” and she agreed.

We drove to the other farm which was actually in the same direction as home. It’s a cute place and not nearly as large but they had a petting zoo and Jen is in love with all animals (think hamsters on YouTube). We spent time with the animals. It looked like the bunny was there to attract business and not necessarily there to greet kids and have his picture taken.

So, I did the only thing a self-respecting dad would do. I broke out of my socially awkward shell and mustered up enough courage to ask the Bunny if we could take a picture with him. This required quite a bit of emotional energy and I suspect I’ll be doing more things like this in the future.

This weekend felt like the first day of spring after a long hard winter.  The sun was high in the sky with a cool breeze blowing.  The air felt light and there was no humidity.  It was the first time I can recall that it was not cold and raining during the Cherry Blossom Festival.  While it would have been nice to go out and take pictures of the brilliant blooms at their peak, I did not relish the thought of competing with my fellow humans.  I prefer a solitary existence or at least an existence where there are no crowds. 

But, I had cabin fever and needed to get out of the house as much as a bear needs to get out after a long hibernation.  My son has been alive for five months now and had yet to experience the great outdoors.  I suppose that is the problem with being born in the winter.  On Saturday I had an appointment to get a haircut so I decided to pack the family into the car and take them along.  After the necessary grooming, we walked across the street to a restaurant for an equally necessary meal.  It seemed to me that every parent who’s child was born around the same time as ours had the same idea.  The dining room quickly filled with strollers, high chairs, car seats and infants from the age of three months to one year.   

After the sustenance and baby watching, we walked a block down to the park along the river.  This is the park where Jennifer and I would come on dates when we first started courting.  My goal was to enjoy some sun and fresh air and to take pictures of Andrew outside since all the pictures so far have not only been indoors, but most have been inside our house.

Andrew was a bit cranky and seemed a little warm as I held him.  He often feels warm to me and I assumed the runny nose and cough were the leftovers of the respiratory infection he had that put him in the hospital.

He was cranky all night long and awoke frequently.  Sunday morning, as we were getting ready for church, I picked him up and noticed that he felt warmer than the day before.  The thermometer had his temperature at 102 degrees.  We called the pediatrician, who fortunately has office hours on the weekends as well as weekdays and nights.  She asked us to come into the office.  We noticed he was also struggling to breathe.  The doctor proclaimed, and we agreed, that this was a new virus and not the one he had before.  The symptoms were completely different from the previous illness.  He had never had a fever or runny nose with the other infection.  The doctor was at a loss as to what to do because he had just finished 10 days of antibiotics so she told us to go home and watch him.  She said she would call in the evening to check on him.  As we were packing up to leave the office she remarked on a whim that maybe we should give him a flu test.  Five minutes later, Andrew was diagnosed with the flu.  The doctor was excited about this because now she had something she could treat.  We picked up a prescription of Tamiflu from the pharmacy on our way home.  So far he has not gotten any worse and his fever has gone down - all good signs.

Today, Andrew’s pre-school emailed to inform the parents that three people (not including Andrew) had contracted the flu.

Andrew has been sick for about 6 weeks now. It started out as what seemed to be a cold and developed into a viral infection of the lungs affecting his breathing. At first, we were not too concerned. He had just started daycare and we figured that catching a cold was pretty normal. When it didn’t clear up in two weeks, we took him to the doctor. He didn’t have a fever and was laughing and energetic, so she told us to just watch him and bring him back if he got worse.

The next week he started having trouble breathing and the doctor prescribed a nebulizer treatment. The week after, he continued to get worse and the doctor added a steroid treatment. The following week, when he was not responding to any of the treatments, she told us to go to the emergency room. He was clearly in respiratory distress at 70 breaths per minute and an O2 level of 90%. To make matters worse he is about 20% underweight.

We spent a long week in the hospital worrying about out little boy. They put him on oxygen, a diuretic, and a breathing treatment. It took him about a day to stabilize and the rest of the week to be weaned off the oxygen. Once his breathing came down to 40 breaths per minute and he was able to keep his oxygen level up on room air, they released him from the hospital. He is still wheezing and very congested and while we are grateful to not be in the hospital anymore, we are still concerned that he still has this infection. Our doctor said if he does not improve in the next few days she will consult with a pulmonologist.

It has been a crazy and stressful March and I hope that April will be a bit calmer. All the stress has finally gotten to me. In the last few days I have started having panic attacks, which is something I have not had in a while.