What a Day

What a day we had on Friday. I'd really rather not re-live the events of that day (it really wasn't that terrible, but definitely not something I'd like to do again!), but since I brought it up in my last post I figured I could give you the short version* of the story...

Derek was on call Thursday night and texted me from the hospital early Friday morning asking me if I wanted to go to New Orleans. My initial thought was: "WHAT?!" Then I vaguely remembered him telling me about a month ago that there was a conference in New Orleans that he might have to go to. Obviously, it was a very last-minute thing. The conference (or at least the part of it that Derek had to attend) was only about 2 hours. So we figured it would be a quick little get-away that would be totally do-able with Shelby. And we figured if it ended up being like the worst case scenario, we could bail at any time and be home in 90 minutes. So Derek left the hospital earlier than normal on a post-call day and got home at about 11am. He slept for about an hour, then we packed up the car and headed out for New Orleans at about 1pm on Friday afternoon.

Shelby napped on the way there, then Shelby and I walked around the hotel during Derek's conference and chatted with him and some other people on their breaks. She was an absolute angel the whole afternoon. Everyone kept stopping us to tell us how cute and happy she was. The day was going better than imagined. The conference ended up lasting a little longer than planned, but Shelby was a trooper till the very end. We scooted out of the conference about 6:30 (which is when Shelby is normally getting ready for bed), but she was still hanging tough. So we quick ran up to our hotel room so Derek could change out of his uniform then we grabbed a quick bite to eat.

Fast-forward to 8:15...we put Shelby down for the night in her pack n play in the hotel bathroom. (Sounds odd, I know. But this way we could keep the tv on and chit-chat a bit without disturbing her too much.) Fast-forward to 10pm..we had just turned off the tv to hit the hay for the night (I know, we're wild and crazy) and the crying commences. If we were at home, we would have just let her cry it out and she probably would have gone right back to sleep in a few minutes...but we didn't want to be those people disturbing the whole hotel. So we rocked her back to sleep and got in bed. This cycle was repeated again at 11pm. And midnight. After the 3rd time, we decided enough was enough and packed up to head back to Biloxi in the middle of the night. At the time, we didn't know what the problem was..if Shelby was having trouble sleeping b/c she didn't know where she was, if the noises of the hotel was bothering her (we were in a busy hotel and our room was near the elevator..but she's done well in hotels before, so who knows?!), or what. In retrospect, it could have been that she was still a bit uncomfortable/fussy from her 6 month shots that she had two days earlier. (When she has shots, I usually try to give her tylenol drops 3 times/day for 48hrs afterward to keep her comfortable. I gave her a dose before we left for New Orleans but forgot to bring them with us to give her before bed that night.)

Shelby slept the whole way home, and we pulled up in our driveway around 2:30am. By this time Shelby was beyond confused at what in the world was going on and proceeded to cry and cry and cry for almost two hours. It was rough, my friends. She finally conked out about 4:30am and slept till 8am on Saturday morning. Needless to say, all three of us were exhausted. We stayed home the rest of the weekend to relax and recuperate. And we are all doing much better because of it! Friday was definitely not a fun day, but it was a learning experience for us. And we survived! :) And thankfully, Shelby went right back to her routine on Saturday and slept for 11.5 hours that night. :)

And now you know the story. ;) Hope everyone's week is off to a good start. Happy Monday, Friends!

*Obviously, I don't know what the meaning of a "short version" is. Maybe this is why my Wordless Wednesday posts are never really wordless?! Ha!