On Wednesday night, around 8:30 p.m., after a happy, healthy, normal day, I went in to check on the little guy before making myself a salad and setteling in for the night. In the 30 seconds it took me to walk from his nursery to the couch, all hell broke lose. Upon getting back to the living room, I heard him throwing up and crying on the monitor.
And from there it didn't stop. Every 10-15 minutes for the next four and a half hours.
Y'all, I can handle a little throw up. It honestly doesn't bother me. So I tried to stay calm, and my AMAZING friend Lauren contacted our other friend Lauren, whose husband happens to be a doctor, to get some advice and plan of attack for me. Fluids in small doses. Monitor. Go from there. Ok. I can handle this. No big deal. At one point I got him to sleep and for 45 minutes, things were calm. My intention was to get our bed ready and have him sleep with me all night incase something else happened. I also needed to get the dogs out of the house for a few minutes so they could do their thing before we settled down. But as soon as I laid him down in the crib, he woke up and instantly threw up again.
After two hours, things had still not slowed down, so I called the advice nurse line at the local civilian hospital. We were going to stop the fluids, give him a warm bath and try to get his stomach calmed down. Then, in an hour, call back and reasses the situation. Upon hanging up the phone with her, his throwup went from normal to a bright neon yellow.
Stomach bile. I called back and we were told to come in immediately.
At this point, I was in sort of a state of panic. There was no more calm. It was 10:30 at night. I couldn't get ahold of M due to where he was and the horrible cell phone reception. Lucas was still throwing up every 10-15 minutes at this point, and somehow I needed to get dressed, pack the diaper bag and get to the hosipital. Lauren #1 (which, coincidiently, I do refer to the Lauren's as Lauren #1 & Lauren #2 in my real life. It makes it easier for the husband to understand which I am talking about! ha!), who I had been texting the entire time, offered to come stay with me, and then incedently go to the hospital with me. But in my head, all I could think was, I have 10 minute windows. That's it. So after he threw up, I set him on the bed (he wasn't going anywhere) and packed up his diaper bag with extra blankets, extra pajamas and a few necessities just in case. I knew that if we went, we would be going for a while. I threw on some clothes & put the dogs in the kennel.
I waited until the next wave hit, and then we locked up and I drove like a crazy person to the civilian hospital, which, thank goodness, is only about 10 minutes away. I FINALLY got a hold of M, told him what was going on, and promised to keep him updated. The staff at the ER facility were amazing, so sweet and so sympathetic. They got us back almost right away to a room but before they could do anything to make the vomiting stop, they wanted to do some xrays. Because of the amount of stomach bile that he was throwing up, the frequency and the color, the doctor thought that his intestines may be twisting and causing everything that was happening. So while we waited for the xrays to come back, I continued to just nurture and help him through the waves.
It was painful. As his mom, I wanted to make it stop. It was not a pretty picture, which bright yellow bile coming out both his mouth and his nose because there was just so much of it. But I shockingly kept it together. When the xrays came back that everything in his stomach and abdomen was fine, they hooked up him to an IV to get some fluids into him. The poor kid was so worn out, y'all, he didn't cry when they stuck the needle into him. It broke my heart.
Once the IV was in, about 1:00 in the morning, they gave him 1ml of zofran, and holy crap ... BRAND NEW KID. The change was instant. The vomiting stopped. He was happy. He was smiling. It was a damn miracle. My hope was that he would go to sleep, but that was not the case. So for the next two hours, while we watched the bag of fluids drip into his IV, we curled up on the bed and watched cartoons on the TV in the room.
Around 3 a.m., the doctor decided that he wanted to try some pedialyte since there had been no episodes since the zofran was given. This made both the nurse and me nervous, but the kid sucked it down and then passed out (which was awesome for me ... I curled up next to him and was MORE than happy to close my eyes for a bit at this point). Around 4 a.m. the doctor came back in, said that since he had kept it down, they were going to discharge us and send us on our way. Their speculation at this point was that it was just a bug, but we were leaving with the understanding that if he threw up again, we needed to come right back.
Got it.
Around 5:30, we were finally able to head home. Lucas & I curled up in our bed and fell right asleep. We had a great day on Thursday with no episodes, but nothing for him except pedialyte, and then Friday we got hit with proof that it was a bug with more messy diapers than I care to talk about & myself catching whatever it was. Oh yeah, and M still out in the field. Mama throwing up & changing baby's dirty diapers did not make for a fun Friday.
And I just want to say to the friends who were there to help us -- and you know who you are -- THANK YOU. It really does take a village, people. We are so lucky to have people in our lives who will drop EVERYTHING at any hour of any day to help us out. I posted the above photo of Lucas with his IV on my facebook page that night, stating that we would be spending the evening in the ER, and I got multiple phone calls and text messages from people asking if we needed anything, on top of the three or four friends who knew what was going on from the beginning and their constant offers of support. This kid is loved by so many.
And as of today, we are all *fingers crossed* happy & HEALTHY.
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