I <3 my Pediatrician

I love my pediatrician. Okay, well technically she's Gracie's pediatrician but that is beside the point. Gracie was three months old when she was exposed to another baby (my second cousin, Emma) who had RSV. Having read everything I could get my hands on during pregnancy and right after her birth, I knew the seriousness of not catching it early enough. When my cousin Celena, called and told me that Emma had RSV, they actually had to immediately hospitalize her because Emma has a condition called Reactive Airway Disease. Basically what it means is that any respiratory illness Emma gets is more severe because she already has RAD. So I called my pediatrician, who assured me (against my own nervous assumptions) that unless Gracie was running a fever of 103, they didn't need to see her.

I must have called that office four different times in two days. I knew from reading that RSV was highly contagious, very serious in infants, and in some cases fatal. And to top it off, Gracie had this 80-year-old man cough. This deep throated, severely bad cough that racked her whole body. A friend at work advised me to get a second opinion, and we found a small practice called Pediatric Care Group that had an opening with a young, very nice woman named Dr. Dina Winston.
Dr. Winston was very nice to us, very warm, and immediately after hearing Gracie cough said, "That poor baby has RSV."
We hadn't even been in her office ten minutes and we had a positive diagnosis, and were given a breathing treatment before another list of prescriptions and instructions.

I had debated several times since moving to Millbrook about finding a pediatrician closer to home, or maybe using my own doctor but I can't bring myself to do it. Maybe it's because they seem to be able to reassure me when I feel like Gracie is deathly ill, and they don't hesitate to answer any questions I might have. All this leads to this morning. After Bryan's appointment with his neurologist, I called the pediatrician to see if they could work Gracie in because she was wheezing this morning when she got up. And when I tried to give her the Triaminic we've been giving her for allergies, I got the pleasure of a nasty clean up when she coughed some of it back up. When we got to the pediatrician's office, Gracie behaved like she never has before.
She didn't cry, didn't fight Dr. Winston (who had to listen to my heart and check my ears before she could do Gracie's) and she was an absolute ANGEL when they said they were going to give her a breathing treatment before making a final decision on treatment.
For those of you who don't know much about it, RSV can cause children who have had it to be much more prone to respiratory illness (this is Gracie's second one this winter) and also to develop asthma later on. So when it comes to coughing/wheezing and breathing problems, I don't play around with waiting it out to call the doctor. And they never fail to make me feel better about bringing her in to catch it early. They diagnosed her with bronchiolitis this morning, or asthmatic bronchiolitis.

The rest of these pictures are just random ones from the last week or so:

My baby sister (sniffle) Christina, turned 16 on January 7th. She's able to drive now so everybody should stay off the road!

When Bryan and I went to see his neurologist today, Gracie went to "work" with her Aunt Tara. This is Gracie, dressed for work. Notice her kitty was stuffed into her purse?