Why is it that when you really hope something doesn't happen, it's usually the first thing that does happen?

Doug was still quarantined this weekend in hopes we wouldn’t keep passing our cold back and forth to each other. I woke up Saturday night to the sound of Sydney in all her snottiness-breathing glory through the monitor so I got up to check on her. She was lying on her stomach and when I picked her up I saw she had the most awful runny nose imaginable. Not to gross you out, but it was caked all the way from her nose to her lip. I’m honestly not sure how she was able to breathe at all since she is still a nose-breather. I turned on the light to start cleaning her nose (you can only imagine how much she LOVED that) and that’s when I noticed all the goop on her eyes. And her eyes weren’t opening. Yes. She got pinkeye too! I yelled for Doug to come back to her room and he did. I called both my sisters to see what I should do (I figure between 5 kids they’d have a world of experience with this) and they suggested a warm washcloth. OK, so we got her nose clean and her eyes opened. Now what? We called our doctor, got an answering service, and an hour later FINALLY got a call back from a nurse. She said to have her checked in the next 24 hours (great, because our doctor doesn’t have Sunday hours AND he’s closed for Labor Day). So we decided to wait until Sunday morning to take her to the emergency room. I’d say a half hour passed before we decided there would be no sleeping that night, we may as well head to the ER right then. We debated taking her back to the same hospital she visited when she was only a week old – our decision was made after Doug called to make sure the whacko doctor we saw that time was NOT on call. There was no way we were going to deal with her again. I mean, who orders a catheter for a 7 day old baby? She also had an IV and I can’t even tell you how many times they did a heel prick. God bless the lady from the lab. She finally put her foot down and told the crazy doctor she wasn’t doing anything else to my baby girl! And she stayed with us most of the night to make sure we were ok. That was the most AWFUL night of my life.

So back to this past weekend, we got to the hospital at 2:52 a.m. and there wasn’t anyone in the waiting room. We thought we’d be in and out. Wrong. We got called back at 3:30 a.m. and a nurse came in to tell us there would be at least a 1-2 hour wait before we saw the doctor. Let me ask you, if we’re going to have to wait that damn long, why even call us back? Why not let us linger in the waiting room where we at least had a television to watch? I got over it as soon as Sydney sneezed and nailed the nurse all the way across the exam room. Is it bad that I laughed a little, especially after the look on his face when I told him she had pinkeye? I don’t think he could have made it to the sink any faster than he did…it truly is the little things that give me the greatest pleasure.

We finally saw a doctor at 6 a.m. Sunday morning. Yep. She looked at Sydney for a grand total of under 10 minutes, took a culture of the eye goop, gave us two prescriptions, and sent us on our way. She didn’t put drops in her eyes or give her some of the antibiotic she prescribed. No, we would have to wait another 5 hours for that when our pharmacy opened. We got home at 6:30 Sunday morning, cleaned Sydney’s eyes again, and put her back in her crib to get some sleep. When she woke up at 9, her eyes were completely swollen and folded in on each other. I tried to comfort her and talk to her because she couldn’t see me. It broke my heart to see her trying to feel for me, her little fingers reaching out, not knowing where I was. Thankfully, the swollen shut eyes didn’t last, her nose started to clear up, and she’s back to normal.

And for something completely unrelated but funny (well Doug found it funny at least), last night I was in bed and I felt something crawl on my belly button. Naturally, I swatted at whatever it was, jumped out of bed and turned on the lights to see what was accosting me. This scared the bejesus out of Doug, well, the whole being blinded by the lights thing, and he asked what I was doing. When I told him what had happened, he just laughed. Apparently a ladybug crawling on me is funny. I don’t see the humor!!!