8 months

Gwen turned 8 months yesterday (22nd)! She is the sweetest most precious little girl. I am in love with her. She is always happy, so well natured, so loving and sweet. At 8months Gwen is army crawling all over. She says "Mama"(started saying about a week ago). She has her two bottom teeth (which she got at 7months) and now has her top left front tooth and her top left eye tooth. Her top right front tooth is breaking through as we speak. She weighs a little under 16lbs and can still fit in to some of her 0-3 shirts, but usually wears 6month clothes.

This precious little baby girl has had a rough last 2 weeks. It started with diarhea for 4 days every 5minutes, then led to a head cold. She had a mild head cold for a few days and then a week ago (last tuesday) it turned into a barking cough, whezzing, and low grade fever. The fever only lasted one night, but her cough and wheezing were there. I took her into the doctor on wednesday. The doctor said she had Croupe. But the frustrating part is that there is no antibiotics you can give to relieve her. They say just put her in a steamy hot bathroom, use the humidifier, vicks vapor rub, tylenol, etc. All the things that I had already been doing but didn't seem to work. So we went home to wait out her cough for the next few days and hope she would start to get better. Her sleepless, crying, coughing nights have been hard for this sweet little baby. Saturday night she began to get even worse. With even worse coughing, and low grade fevers this baby girl wasn't on her way to getting better. I decided to stay home with her on Sunday to let her rest and sleep. Well she didn't do much of that because of so much discomfort. She slept for maybe 15min. at a time and then woke up because of fever and coughing. It breaks my heart to see this sweet, innocent baby so helpless and in discomfort. All I can do is give her tylenol, other temporary relievers, love and to hold and cuddle her, but nothing to help her get rid of the discomfort and pain she was feeling. Last night, Sunday night, she was up all night with a fever of 102. She was acting lathargic, not eating and looked so sick and in pain. I sat up in bed all night holding her on my chest. Thats the only way she liked it. Jono was so sweet and was up with me trying to help her out. Jono decided that he wanted to take her to the hospital to have her checked out. We didn't want to take any risks since there are so many crazy sickness out there right now, and since she had been sick for 2 weeks and not getting any better, but worse. Jono took in around 3:30am while I stayed with the boys. This gave Jono quality snuggle time with Gwen. She just laid on Jono the whole time in the waiting room. Poor Gwen had to get a catheter so they could test her pee, thermometer up her bottom a few times, and X-rays to check out her lungs. She looked good for the most part. But the respritory doctor said she had RSV. Its a viral infection so not much you can do. They gave her a breathing treatment to help break up the junk in her lungs. Jono said she did so well. What a sweet little thing. I told Jono he was the sweetest dad to take his little girl in so early in the morning. He gets an award in my book. Gwen is now sleeping, but still feverish. I hope she can begin to get better and fight off this awful cold. I am glad nothing is majorly wrong, but just want this little girl to be her happy self again soon. I am so thankful she is my little girl. Your Mommy and Daddy love you so much Gwen!

*Sorry this was so long, just wanted to record it for her journal*