3-year Doctor's Appointment

I took Ella to her 3-year checkup on Monday morning. Since Ella turned 3, she now stood on the scale to get weighed and up against the measuring stick (I'm sure there is a real name for that) to get her height measured, and she even had her blood pressure checked (96/52) for the first time!

She weighs 28.5 lbs which is 20-25th percentile, and she is 36 1/2 inches tall, the 35th-40th percentile. They didn't measure her head this time, so I guess that stops at the 2 year appointment, although I'm sure it would be just as robust as always. She gained more than 3 pounds since her 2-year appointment and grew almost 4 inches, she's getting so big!

She refused to say a single word to the doctor except to tell him that she likes to eat chicken and macaroni and cheese. The appointment was quick and easy though and she needed just one vaccine. She cried but was quite pleased with the band-aid and lollipop that she got after.

I dropped her off at school after her appointment around 10 am, and then because we had snow coming, her school was closing at 3:30 for the day. I went and got her around 3, and she said her arm hurt when I was putting her in her carseat. I was thinking I must have twisted her as I got her in her seat, but then later that night she was complaining about it again. Then it occurred to me that it must have been soreness from the site of her vaccine. She is a real trooper though and in general does not complain about pain unless something is really painful, so we were surprised how badly her arm was hurting from just one shot.

After her bath it looked like she had several small bug bites on her skin that popped up out of her nowhere and she was acting kind of cranky, so we thought she was having a mild reaction to the vaccine. On Tuesday morning she woke up covered in hives. They were all over her body, her face, hands, feet, etc.

I was so scared she was having a severe allergic reaction and called the nurse line since the doctor's office was having a delayed opening because we had some ice overnight. The nurse said she doubted it was from the vaccine but probably from something else, although we hadn't given her anything new to eat or any other changes. Once the doctor's office opened we had several phone calls and the doctor thinks she must be allergic to something in the vaccine, and so we gave her Benadryl every 4 hours and just had to make sure she didn't have any serious signs like changes to her breathing, throat or mouth swelling, etc.

Fortunately nothing like that happened, and it was just the hives, which were really itchy to her, and on Wednesday she woke up with a swollen face and the hives over her eyes were worse so that she couldn't open her eyes all the way. She just looked terrible and we felt so sorry for her. By Wednesday night they were fading a lot and she was acting a lot more like herself, hyper and excited and happy. On Thursday she went back to school and still had the rash and was itchy, but over the weekend she got back to 100% again.

It makes me nervous to know that she has an allergy to something in the vaccine, and I hope it's an isolated case and that whatever the ingredient is, is something so unusual that she'll never come in contact with in normal life.