Mommy's first scare!

Stella started out with what seemed to just be the common cold. A couple days later I noticed she was severely congested and sounded horrible! When she would cough she would sometimes choke on the phlegm and turn bright red and be gagging so much she would stop breathing for a few seconds! I was in such a panick! She also would start wheezing so badly that you could hear her from another room away!

It seemed to me like she was perhaps having asthma attacks. I took her into Kingston General Hospital a few evenings back and she was admitted right away with the triage nurse saying "infant under resperatory distress here!", that made me so terrified to hear that!

They hooked her up to a nebulizer with asthma medication in it, and it seemed to help a lot so they sent us home... saying it was probably just a cold that got in her chest and it will go away in a few days...

Something just didn't sit right with me on calling it just a COLD! The symptoms started to come back and so did the wheezing, I took her back in the next morning and asked for them to please look into it further, of course the wheezing stopped by the time I brought her in so they said again "JUST A COLD!"

When I brought her home it got worse and I decided to take her into our other hospital in Kingston called "Hotel Dieu" it has an emerg outpatient department just for pediatrics (this is the place I should of taken her all along, but I totally forgot about it.) The doc came in right away and knew what it was just by listening to her! She said its RSV, which is a resperatory virus.... It can be quite dangerious for infants so they sent us home with an inhaler with a mask attached to it to give to infants and I am to give it to her every 4 hours or so throughout her cold.....

IT IS GETTING MUCH BETTER, WE DON'T HEAR HER WHEEZE AT ALL ANYMORE. I asked if this could be asthma and she said yes, it could be however they do not diagnose asthma to infants or kids under 5 just because it could be so many other things, so if she has this same cough and wheezing problem with every cold or allergy she has until she is about 4 or 5 then it probably is asthma, so we will have to wait and see.

Stella's first plane experience!

We had our first vacation to Florida as a family unit this early March 2010.
We knew the weather wouldn't be GREAT since we were still going in late winter, but never could we have guessed all that would go wrong!

Stella was an absolute DREAM on the flights, her ears didn't bother her one bit and she slept pretty much the entire time both ways. The problems we had were with the airline company we chose "United Airlines".... (and also some other problems along the way.. here is our story) Please people, let me vent here.

We left for our flight from Kingston to depart in Syracuse, NY to Washington DC, to then connect to Tampa, FL..... On the way to the border we realized we forgot to drop off our house key at Rob's parents house since his dad was going to work on the renovations of our basement while we were gone. We were already 20 min down the 401 then turned back around.....

Then we left the 2nd time after dropping off the key and once we got to the border we were "randomly selected" for the day to have our car searched and to go in the building and be interrogated by police while they played 20 questions for about 45 minutes (meanwhile Stella was getting fussy so I had to go into their bathroom to breastfeed and change her diaper.)

Then we finally took off and while going through security at the airport they had to search the stroller and carset base really well so in the meantime the bins got discombobulated going through the xray machine so we forgot our infant backpack carrier thing....

Then our plane was delayed 15 min. so we were afraid we would somehow miss our connecting flight in Washington, D.C..... We got to Washington and their airport is a freaking ZOO!! It is soo spread apart, we had to take 2 shuttle buses, and go up and down escalators and take elevators with the stroller.... and of course I had to take 5 min to change Stella's diaper.... we were literally RUNNING TO OUR GATE.... and when we got to it they were JUST CLOSING THE DOORS, AND WOULDN'T LET US ON!!!! I was RAGING!

Well, if you know me well enough, I HATE CONFRONTATION, but if something really gets me HOT I will LOSE IT AND GO APE SH*T... this was one of those times. I ran to customer service and gave the lady a piece of my mind, told her it was the first time we were traveling with an infant and made it impossible to get here on time, and that United should of not of given us this itinerary because it was set up to fail. She gave us nights accommodations and the nearest Holiday INN and 2 meal vouchers to use at the hotel, our flight was scheduled for 5am the next day... it was already 12am.

So then we were given horrible directions to get to where the shuttle bus would pick us up to go to our hotel, we finally find it and have to wait on the curb in the cold for 30 minutes at midnight until our shuttle finally came... I was crying because Stella was crying because she was hungry and a bit chilly, and I hate to see her suffering. We were a mess!

The next morning we have to wake up at 4am to catch our flight.... 4 hours later.
We finally make it, but now we have problems with the rental car. Robert didn't realize he had to have the $300 for the car plus another $300 for liability available on a credit card, instead he had $300 on credit and $300 cash or debit... they wouldn't work with us on that so he had to leave Stella and I at the car rental place and take a shuttle back to the airport to use the atm to take $600 cash out to rent the damn car.... FINALLY WE GET TO MOM'S BEACH HOUSE...... (while we were there the air mattress we were staying on popped so we had to buy a new one.)

Then the trip home...... connecting flight in Chicago was delayed 2.5 HOURS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! we were already 2 hours to wait at the connecting airport, so we waited a total of 4.5 hours in the Chicago airport for the next flight... once we get to Syracuse MY BAG WASN'T THERE!! someone stole my expensive luggage with all of Stella and I's stuff in it....

HOME NOW AND PISSED. NEVER GOING ON VACATION AGAIN!!! I DON'T THINK ANYONE CAN TOP THIS OF WORST EVER EXPERIENCES TRAVELING...