Our Baby Size Life!

Posts Tagged ‘sick’

Well, whomever said that parenting was an ever learning state of being hit the freakin’ nail on the head. Another little nugget of information concerning babies and their digestive systems has just acquired some real estate in my ever expanding parental brain. Here’s the situation: Sam has developed a little cough over the past couple days, and last night it got a little… well… wetter. You know what I mean, he’s got some snotty action going on in there now.

So, Melissa and I figure a cold has set in and we proceed to clean out his nose before giving him his pre-bedtime bottle, which is one of the favorite moments of my day. Sam and I settle into the comfy rocking chair in his room, I dim the lights, throw on a little sleepy-time music and plug the kid into his dairy fix. Bliss folks… pure bliss. That went well, the problem came afterward. Just as Sam was finishing his bottle and I was easing him off to La-La Land, Melissa sticks her head in the door way and reminds me to give him some Tempra infant cold medicine before he falls asleep. Ah Mommy to the rescue! Insensitive and uncaring Dad would’ve put little Sammy to bed all stuffed up and snorting boogers all night. Well, no, of course I would not have done that, but Mommy was right as it would help him sleep.

So up we get, away from the warm and friendly confines of the rocking chair to Sam’s crib where I lay him down. Sam immediately sits up, then stands up gripping the edge of the crib. Great! He’s more awake now and he’s vertical which should make giving him the medicine a little easier. Turns out, it just gave him greater range. Let me explain…

So I kneel in front of him and wrap one arm around his body as the other hand feeds him the meds. I had barely twisted the cap on the medicine bottle when some very warm fluid soaked my shirt. Puke! Not wanting to drop Sam, I call for Melissa to come and give me a hand, which turned out to be a good call, because Sammy-boy wasn’t done. The second and bigger projectile-like wave hit the crib railing, my left arm, his mattress, the crib bars and finally dripped down on his carpet. Super fun vomit party! Sam’s head didn’t spin, so we didn’t all a young priest and an old priest…

Sparing you some of the details (like pea and carrot chunks), everything was covered in a nice pinkish liquid, due to the fact that the milk and Tempra, a red colored cold medicine, had mixed… And the smell…whoo baby! I think I prefer the foul odor of a full diaper sitting in the hot sun. Melissa took Sam and cleaned him up as I worked on the room. After we got done, Sam fell asleep right away. Poor little guy was up way past his bedtime! Despite his rosé reflux, he slept great!

Dad, on the other hand, felt a little guilty about making his son behave like a super model on a diet, but now I know the rule not to mix red and white applies to kids too!

…and knowing is half the battle!

Today’s post is the finale of my “Sam’s Big Gift” mini series of posts detailing, in hopefully humorous fashion, our adventures of last week’s trip to the hospital.  To get yourself acquainted with the rest of the series, why not read up on Part 1, Part 2 and (while you’re at it) Part 3 before proceeding?  It’ll put you into the context of what happened and how we got to the hospital.

And now for the rest of the story…

After my episode with the needle from Hell, nurse Sandi (not her real name) let me rest up a bit before “The Big Move”.  The nurses now deemed us self sufficient enough to be placed into an observation room, away from the crazy happenings of the triage hallway/cot area.   This was a welcome change, even though it took them 20 minutes of tugging and pushing my stretcher around the tight hallways of the hospital, before settling on a room that could fit both my stretcher and Melissa’s.  They would put me in one ammonia smelling room only to come fetch me three minutes later to park me in a bio-waste smelling room.  Just as Sandi pushed me into that nasty second room, an orderly came by and said that he hadn’t cleaned that room yet hence the smell of the previous occupant lingering in the air. Nice.  Now I had a throat full of bile and a nose full of sh*t.

So off we went for another session of musical chairs, this time landing me in a room with an 80 year old lady.  Sandi apparently thought that this lady, who was two and a half times my age and had a belly button between her boobs, was my wife.  Sigh… Enter nurse Mandi (never saw nurse Sandi again) who whisked me away yet again, away from my geriatric roommate to finally bring me to the last room I would visit in this hospital.  Mandi pushed me into the double sized room and assured me Melissa was on her way and considering how the last 20 minutes went, I hardly believed her.  But then, a noise found itself to my ear.  It was low a first, almost an unpleasant, incomprehensible buzz that quickly grew louder into a jabbering of words being rapidly and enthusiastically exchanged.  Words in the voice of Melissa and her sister chatting away as they approached the room.  Happy to see Melissa for the first time since we left the ambulance a few hours earlier, I greeted her with a blown kiss.  She smiled too, happy to be back together.

Myriam, Melissa’s sister, brought our bags to the door of the room and repeated a routine she must have done a hundred and sixty times that day: throw on a visitor’s gown and put on rubber gloves.  You see, Melissa and I were in “quarantine” due to the unknown nature of our illness.  So Myriam had no choice but to put on and take off, every time she stepped from or into the room, her gown and gloves.  Even back in the triage area, she had to change when she went between our cots. An annoying precaution to be sure, but to this day she hasn’t been sick!  Myriam was a great help to us and we were thankful that she was there as we are not sure what we would’ve done without her.

Read on here!

Ok folks, time for the rest of our mini family crisis story! If you’re unaware of what happened or just need a recap, start off by reading Sam’s Big Gift: Part 1 first, then come back here for the rest.

Last time I left off when the paramedics entered the room, so I that’s where I’ll pick it up. Melissa and I are lying in our bed, side by side, both of us in our pyjamas with wet face cloths on our foreheads and a pile of blankets at our feet when they step into the room. The paramedics, we’ll call them Jack and Jill, were immediately smiling at the sight of us and quickly apologized for doing so, explaining that they found us to be too cute not to smile. Assuring them that we weren’t insulted but would appreciate their help as well as their good humor, they took the hint and proceeded to introduce themselves and ask us a series of symptom, medical and family history questions. They then took our vitals while easily chatting with my Dad, who had come to take care of Sam, and Melissa’s sister Myriam, who was going to follow us to the hospital. They explained to us that the big concern is that we were suffering from dehydration and they strongly recommend we see a doctor, preferably a hospital.

I was feeling relatively OK by that point, my last visit to the porcelain throne had been about 90 minutes earlier and, although my body was very weak, my stomach was feeling stronger. So, I pushed for them to take Melissa because she wasn’t doing good, but Jill cut me off like a neutered dog saying that since we both fell ill around the same time, we both had to go. This would ensure we were sick with the same thing, whether it be viral or food poisoning or something more sinister which they only referred to as a “mediacized public health emergency”. That was, of course, bull. We all new they were talking about the MapleLeaf meat virus outbreak thingy that’s been on the news for a couple weeks now: Listeriose.

Keep reading here!

It’s been a pretty eventful last couple of days around our household and it all began last Saturday evening while I was feeding Sam, who seemed a little odd in his behavior. Sparing you the details, suffice to say he just didn’t seem “right”.

We’re on the living room couch, he’s sitting on my lap and I’m gently patting him on the back to get that mid-bottle burp out, when suddenly, Sam projectile vomits in one fell splash, all over my arm, leg, couch and floor. Surprised by the amount of fluid Sam has produced and deemed to share with his Dad, I call over to Melissa for some help with the clean up. And true to form, reliable Mom, comes walking over with one half of a paper towel. Upon arriving at the scene of the spill, Melissa quickly sees that no matter what the absorption capabilities of the paper towel, a half will not do. So as she turns to fetch more, Sam accentuates the point by vomiting again twice in rapid succession all over the place. You know, to hit the spots he missed before.

Melissa and I clean up the mess, Sam and myself all the while making us wonder what caused Sam to have an involuntary reflux of gastro-intestinal acids… umm to puke. So we go through the check list of usual suspects and settle on it maybe being his milk. We thought this because since that morning, Sam had not been finishing his bottles, always leaving an ounce or two, which he’d never done. So I took his unfinished bottle and squeezed a few drops into my mouth to taste it, immediately noticing and odd taste. I then asked Melissa to do the same and she confirmed that it was probably the milk. So we threw out all his made bottles, washed, and made new bottles from another formula box we had bought. Sam was happy and playful the rest of that evening, so we thought nothing more of it. He did what he had to do, and that was that.

Boy were we wrong…