The Worst 36 hours of my life

Kind of a scary title I have there. I imagine all sorts of things are running through your minds. But here is a timeline of how my life went from around 5am on March 17 to around 5pm on March 18.

5:00am 3/17: Mike wakes up (after sleeping for 8 hours!). I pick him up and he immediately vomits all over me. Not the normal little spitup he usually does, but forceful, column of yuck, vomiting.

5:01am: He does it again as I lay him on the changing table.

5:15am: he does it again after I feed him

5:17am: he does it again all over our bed as I go in to talk to Brad about what could be wrong with him.

6:45 am: I feed him again and he keeps everything down, so I decide the morning stuff was a fluke and I continue getting ready for work.

7:40am: I drop him off at daycare with the strict instructions to call me if anything out of the ordinary happens (most specifically the vomiting).

10:00am: I call daycare to see how he is doing (they tell me he is still sleeping and hasn't eaten yet).

11:00am: I call daycare to see how he is doing (he just woke up and is starting to eat).

2:00pm: Daycare calls Brad to tell him he vomited.

2:30pm: Brad picks Mike up, talks to daycare about what happened and calls the pediatrician.

3:00pm: Brad and Mike go to the pediatrician. He thinks everything is ok and we should just watch him. They postulate that he may have picked up a bit of a stomache bug.

7:00pm: I feed him and he vomits all over the place again.

8:30pm: I am carrying him around and look down and notice he has spit up all over my arm and it is pea soup green (Happy St. Patricks day, right??)

8:45pm: Brad calls the emergency line for our pediatrician (apparently green spitup can be a sign of an intestinal blockage) who recommends that we get to the ER within the hour.

9:30pm: We arrive at Cardinal Glennon Children's hospital.

9:45pm - 2:00am 3/18: They give Mike and IV to start getting some fluids in him (he was fairly dehydrated from all of the vomiting). They can't get it on the first arm, so they end up sticking the second arm as well. After the IV they order an abdominal x-ray to see if there is an obvious blockage. There isn't, so they order an ultrasound. Luckily they just keep us in the ultrasound room for a while after they are done and Mike napped for about 90 minutes. The ultrasound didn't really show anything out of the ordinary so they decided to do imaging with contrast. A tube was stuck down his nose and some sort of imaging contrast pumped into him then they took x-rays to see if the contrast was making its way through him. These tests pretty much showed that he didn't have a blockage (good news because there is a good chance he would have gone to the OR that night if he did), but they still weren't sure what was wrong with him.

2:00am: They decide to admit him to the hospital

3:00am: The paperwork is completed and we finally get taken to his room

4:00am: The nurses have finished evaluating him (he now weighs 14lb 9oz as a side note) and he is finally somewhat settled for the night (or I guess early morning???)

4:00am-6:30am: Brad and I share a twin sized couch-bed trying to get a little sleep between Mike waking up and crying (you may have noticed it doesn't say anything since the 7pm post about him eating...he hasn't eaten anything since 7pm...ordered him to be NPO in case he needed surgery, and is not a happy camper).

6:30am: First round of people come in to round on him.

9:30am: They take him back down to x-ray to get another abdominal shot to see if there is any of the contrast left in his bowels.

9:45am: The attending shows up tells us he will look at the x-ray and then let us know if we can feed him.

1:00pm: The finally look at the x-ray and decide we can try to feed him a little bit so they start with an ounce of pedialyte. If he can keep it down for 1 hour we will move forward.

2:00pm: No sign of the pedialyte so we give him an ounce of milk.

3:00pm: No sign of the milk so we give him 2 ounces.

3:30pm: The attending comes back and talks to us about what is going on the let's us know that they think they will discharge him.

4:30pm: We are on our way home.

Diagnosis: "Dunno", likely a stomache bug of some sort, or a minor blockage.

Future Plan: If he does it again, contact our pediatrician immediately. Otherwise we have to take him back in a few weeks for some more tests.

High points: Mike decided he knew how to rollover and practiced rolling from his back onto his stomache. He is particularly fond of rolling from his back onto his side and staying that way.

Even baby hospital gowns make your butt hang out, plus it is pink. Brad and I discussed the need for neutral colored baby hospital gowns (it was a long night).

Getting all settled in for the night

Mike practicing rolling over.

Brad and Mike ready to go home.