Barrelful of Monkeys

Whoa, boy!!!  Wednesdays have become very exciting at our house.  Two weeks ago, Conor started his first cold.  Last week, the house nearly caught on fire.  Yesterday, Conor caught his first stomach virus.  Yippeee!!!!

A stomach virus is what I had previously known as the stomach flu.  But times as they are, they want to reserve “flu” for respiratory illnesses caused by viruses and use stomach virus or stomach infection for when the child shoots milk out both ends. 

New moms out there, let me assure you that if you think the spit up is throw up then it’s not.  Unless your little angel is erupting like Mount Vesuvius, it’s not yak.  Conor threw up once at daycare.  When they called me, they said it was light green and phlegm-y.  When I called the doctor’s office they said it was probably from his cold; he’d swallowed too much (because he can’t blow his nose) and it had probably upset his stomach.  So when I picked him up, I gave him a little snack.  It had been about 2 hours since the yak. 

Afterward I found out that 1) he’d only eaten one bottle at daycare, 2) it was yak and diarrhea, and 3) I probably should have waited and seen if he could tolerate Pedialyte before I fed him.  Nonetheless, he ate hungrily.  Then he made a red face and erupted with a fountain of milk all over both of us.  It was honestly like someone had turned the spigot “ON” and his mouth opened as milk came bubbling out.  It may have made a cute water fountain, but not so much as my child.  I must admit some pride in the amount of milk I had just produced, though.

We came home and called the doctor and started on the rehydration treatment.  He was starting to get a little lethargic and as we couldn’t feed him, we knew we needed to do something to get his fluids up.  And yes, his diaper was pretty dry. 

I loooooove our pediatrician with their after hours triage nurses!  I spent a good deal of the night talking with Michael the emergency RN making sure I was doing it right.  Basically, we had to wait two hours since the last yak and then start a teaspoon of Pedialyte every 5 minutes for an hour.  First go round, he yakked it up again.  So we had to wait another hour, but he actually went to sleep for 2 ½ hours which the nurse said was even better.

So then we started again.  And like the monkey pig that he is, he quickly figured out how to drink out of the medicine spoon.  Not only did he learn how, he lusted after it when he saw me coming towards him.  It was an expression I call boob lust, but it was for the spoon. (No, I’m not jealous) It’s a 8 hour regimen involving small sips at short intervals moving into 2 ounces an hour for 2 hours.  The finale is an all you can eat Pedialyte buffet which if he keeps down for 2 hours moves him back to the boob.  He is currently sucking on my left wrist as I write this.  We have 50 minutes until it’s back to the boob.

Everything seems fine now, but I hope he doesn’t give my arm a hickey. 

9:49:15 AM