Allergies...we are not friends

So I've suspected that Dylan has had allergies for a couple weeks now, so we made an appointment to see what was up. The appointment started out normal enough, check weight, check ears, check nose, check heart. Twenty-one lbs and all systems functioning properly. But it does look to the doctor that he has allergies, dark circles under the eyes, breathing through the mouth, rubbing the eyes and nose...so what do we do? Dr. Neilson suggests trying some Allegra to see if that will alleviate the symptoms. Sounds good so we're all done, right? Wrong. Dr. Neilson, in her infinite wisdom (that's not sarcasm, I really do think she's very smart) thinks maybe we should draw blood to see what he's allergic to. Ugh, drawing blood, my favorite. My son screaming in pain, my other favorite. This is going to be fun.

I'm not sure how many of you know this about me, but I'm one of those that has to lie down to get my blood drawn cause otherwise I'd end up on the floor. It's mostly the needle I have the problem with but the whole experience is rather unpleasant. Having a baby has helped since you get poked all the time when you're pregnant, but still the only times I cried during labor were when they had to put in my IV and when they had to do the epidural. So yeah, not my cup of tea.

My job was to hold him down. Really? I have to hold my poor baby down? Ok, I can do this, just don't cry and don't look at the needle. In goes the needle and the screaming starts. Then I hear from the nurse the words that I dread when I'm getting my blood drawn..."Oh, come on!" This usually means the vein has rolled or otherwise refused to give up the goods. So she proceeds to dig around his arm with the needle to find the vein, which is when I decided it would be a good time to look. Smart. Now I'm very light-headed trying to hold down my screaming child and there's still no blood. Time to try the other arm. His screaming has brought in another nurse to help. Thank goodness. After about 2-3 more minutes (ok, it was probably more like 1 min) we finally got results. Yay! And our trooper only cries long enough to get out of the office and then he's ok. Good thing cause I was starting to think having untreated allergies wouldn't have been THAT bad.

So in less than 2 weeks we'll know what is making him unable to breath through his nose. We're going to see if the Allegra helps and maybe we'll start to get more pictures of him without his tongue sticking out. Fingers-crossed.