Thankful For a New Week!

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." Lamentations 3:22-23

I'm so glad that it's a new week and that the Lord's mercies are new every morning!

Since Laurel was about 11 months, she has gotten hives every now and again and we don't know why. The first time she had them all over her, we took her to the pediatrician and they thought it could be related to a stomach virus that she had just had. We also changed her soap just in case. When she got another bad case of hives, they drew blood and did allergy testing. The blood work came back normal and we were back at square one. When Laurel does get them, we give her Benadryl, and they go away in a day or two. Last Sunday, Laurel woke up with hives and they progressively got worse throughout the day. Monday was even worse than Sunday! I had given her Benadryl, but it didn't seem to do anything. I had called the nurse line at our Pediatrician's office just so see if there was anything else I could do and they suggested that we try giving her a little Children's Zyrtec and that should take care of her hives. We started giving it to her and after a few days of being in her system, the hives went away. However, Zyrtec had some side effects for our sweet girl. Once the Zyrtec was in her system, Laurel barely had an appetite. She would drink her milk, but she would barely eat a thing! Her stomach was also upset. We hated that was having stomach issues and wouldn't eat anything. It was so hard on us. On Friday night, Laurel decided she wanted to eat some of this Mexican dip we had made. We were so ecstatic that she was finally hungry for something that we just let her have what she wanted, without thinking about the consequences of eating that on an empty and somewhat upset stomach! So on Saturday morning, Laurel got sick in her crib and still had an upset stomach. So Saturday and Sunday ended up being days of staying in, cuddling (a RARE thing, so she must not have been feeling good!), and a bland diet with water and pedialyte. Thankfully, she LOVED the pedialyte so that was really helping to rehydrate her! We also stopped the Zyrtec. Laurel really started to feel better on Sunday evening and was back to her old playful self! Now, Laurel's appetite seems to be back in full swing and her stomach issues are gone. Praise the Lord! So we're back to square one again about the cause of Laurel's hives. From the research I've done, it seems like that you don't ever end up finding out the cause of the hives a lot of the time. So even though we're back at the starting point with these hives (although we're sort of thinking it's probably some sort of environmental allergy), we praise the Lord for Laurel's health and that she doesn't seemed to be bothered much by these hives at all when she gets them.