True Love and heart break

I didn't take many showers this week. I'm not sure if most days I even brushed my teeth. I don't think I did. I have not felt this helpless since Charlotte was three weeks old and cried for 24 hours straight. Bryce came home from work that day and found both Charlotte and I in tears. This week topped that experience by far.

Let me start at the beginning. We went to a birthday party on Sunday and Charlotte was acting really quiet and reserved. She also wouldn't eat anything at the party. I thought she was probably just tired and she often has a hard time with crowds so I didn't really think much of it. We got in the car to come home and didn't make it very far. We had to stop at Bryce's parents house to assess the situation that's how quickly she turned sickly. My poor Charlotte pooped everywhere in her clothes and had to wear a swim diaper home. By the time we got here her temperature was 103.8 and she was miserable. That was the start to our week from hell. Charlotte woke up every hour that night with diarrhea. We went through so many pull ups and pjs it is not even funny, on top of feeding the baby throughout the night too. I think we literally slept less than two hours. Thank God Bryce stayed home with me on Monday and took Charlotte to the doctor where we got the dreaded words "it's just a virus". They told us to give her motrin for the fever but not to give her anything to stop the poop, it was her body's way of getting rid of the virus. We seriously spent more time in the bathroom with Charlotte than anywhere else. Bryce left for work Tuesday morning and Charlotte was up for good by 6:00 AM. Emily woke up at 9:00 AM and after an hour of trying to nurse the baby but having to set her down on the floor to help Charlotte on the toilet every ten minutes (and Emily still wasn't done eating) I finally called Monica in tears for reinforcement. It literally broke my heart to hear Charlotte in pain in the bathroom and then hear the baby crying when I left her alone to help Charlotte. And every time I came back to pick the baby up I would fervently pray that I was not giving Emily whatever awful virus Charlotte had.
Wednesday went by. Thursday went by. Charlotte is still sick. She is still on the toilet every two hours at least. She still has a fever. She still won't eat (seriously, the most I could get her to eat was a handful of rice crispies), and she is clutching her stomach with pain. I have never been such an emotional wreck in my life. Thursday night I found out what true love is. True love is saran wrapping your toilet to collect a stool sample for the doctor. True love is collecting that stool sample and storing it in a specimen jar until the morning and rushing it to the doctor's office. True love is praying over the stool sample that your little girl will get well again.

Now it's time for the update. Charlotte is doing much better. It was literally almost a week before she would eat a normal meal again. Her digestive system still isn't quite back to normal, but almost. The doctor told us that based on her stool sample she had salmonella poisoning. I have no idea how she got it, but by the Grace of God we made it through this week. I hope we never have to experience this again!