And all that was fine, really — no one likes the last month of pregnancy anyway — until we learned that the double-whammy of showing up more than 3 weeks early and having been exposed to Pitocin during delivery [because my water broke -- they really want the baby out within 12 hours if possible -- so, Pitocin if your contractions aren't moving along fast enough] made her all the more likely to spike a high bilirubin level. Which she did, and then had to spend 24 hours in the phototherapy box, and to date has had at least 6 heel sticks to check her blood level. We’re hoping the last one will be tomorrow morning — and all signs look good on that front.

That just wasn’t enough for us. We like to do things in a big way. So, Friday night, as we were waiting for both our dads to arrive in town, Ashby decided to go and develop a fairly scary allergy to pomegranate seeds.

He’d been wanting to try them again for some time. The 9yo has a friend who brings them to school for lunch fairly often, and we’d just been discussing them at the house — how they were the trendy food, and supposed to be so good for you, and we really needed to try some, etc. Ashby had had some years ago but didn’t quite remember what they were like. So, when he ran by the store recently, he picked some up to try.

All I can say is, thank heavens he didn’t try them one of the two nights he was home alone this week with the 3yo while the baby and I were still at the hospital.

Late Friday afternoon, he sat down and had a few for a snack. Then I had him hold the baby while I was busy with something. I came back in the room a few minutes later, and he mentioned sneezing. Whereupon I snatched the baby out of his hands and said, “I’ve been freaking out about swine flu all week and here YOU are, sneezing on the baby???” So he gets up and says not only that, but now his head feels stuffy and maybe he’ll take a shower. I sent him out of the room with a warning that I was now serious about having him spend the night with his dad in Hopkinsville.

While he was in the shower, he developed a horrifying hacking cough. He emerged not 10 minutes later with his eyes nearly swollen shut.

At which point I hollered for my mother — thank goodness she was here! — and the two of them hopped in the car and headed for an urgent care place. They gave him epinephrine which stopped the reaction, but he didn’t improve. So they hustled him off to Baptist in an ambulance.

Meanwhile, I’m having to get the play-by-play from my mom via cell phone, because Ashby really couldn’t talk at this point. Breathe, just enough. Talk, no.

So, then he got more epinephrine, some steroids, and still didn’t get better. They were going to admit him overnight to the ICU! for more epinephrine and continuous monitoring, but they didn’t have a bed, so he spent the night in the ER. Somewhere in there, his dad arrived to stay with him, my mom came home, and things settled down.

The whole time he was gone, I couldn’t talk to him — first because he couldn’t talk, and then because they didn’t have cell phone reception in the area of the hospital where they were. So, I sat home worrying about him and feeling bad for saying I was going to send him to Hopkinsville for his “cold.”

He came home Saturday morning and seems back to normal now, thank goodness. We’re crossing our fingers for an uneventful week of late-night feedings and the usual chaos, with no additional medical emergencies.