Baby's First Stomach Virus

As I mentioned in the last post, there has been blogging silence for good reason! We just finally emerged from beneath the awful cloud that was Ethan's first stomach virus. It came out of nowhere. Sunday the 23rd he was laughing, playing, totally normal. He was a bit fussy when I put him down, but I attributed it to teething. He woke up and cried a couple of times but went back down. Then at around 11:30, he woke up screaming.

::Warning: The following is pretty detailed, so any emetaphobes should probably not read this. For some reason, I just feel the need to record it all for posterity. Perhaps to show Ethan some day to make him see what all his mommy had to do for him!::

I went into the nursery and immediately noticed his legs sticking through the slats of the crib. Poor baby, I thought. He's stuck! But a few steps closer revealed this to be just the beginning of his problem. Not only was he stuck so that he couldn't move, his face was stuck in a puddle of puke. I grabbed him up, stripped him down, and called for reinforcements. Since he hadn't shown any signs of being sick, we concluded that he must have been so upset about his legs being stuck that he made himself vomit, right? Sheets changed, new pajamas, back in bed. And then he began heaving again. I grabbed him just in time for him to puke on my shoulder instead of the crib. We ran to the bathroom where he proceeded to vomit every 5-10 minutes. Finally, Ethan and I settled into the guest room with a towel for a pillow and a Cool Whip container for a puke bucket. After a final puke at 12:30, he passed out in my arms. He woke up once an hour to puke and went back to sleep, though by 2:30, it was mostly just dry heaving and bile. In short, it was an awful night.

He woke up around 6:30, happy as could be. He spent the day playing, nursing, and drinking whatever Pedialyte I could get down his throat (he HATES it!!!). I was feeling pretty good that we had gotten through the worst of it. He even slept somewhat decently that night. On Tuesday, we began adding back a few solids, ever so slowly. Mostly just some cereal and toast. I also began giving him expressed breast milk from my freezer stash since he absolutely refused Pedialyte, even in popsicle form! He was much more sluggish and whiny than the previous day and just didn't seem to feel well. He didn't nap much, and around 6, he was extremely tired. I was doing my best to keep him awake so his daddy could tell him goodnight. He began fussing and, out of nowhere, he vomited up all he'd eaten, all over me and all over the floor. And we were right back where we started. I felt so dejected, so helpless, and so worried that I'd done something wrong to make him sick again.

While he didn't throw up again that night, he also didn't want to sleep alone, so we spent most of the night in the guest room again, nursing and cuddling. And the next day, we started over with the nursing and breast milk. On Thursday, with great trepidation, I added back solids again. And he kept them down! By Friday, he was eating more and seemed to be in better spirits. And by Saturday, his diet was totally normal. However, today has been the first day he didn't have a diarrhea blowout, so he still wasn't 100% (and even now, it's a bit softer than usual).

So even though the worst of it lasted less than a week and the whole thing only lasted a week and a half, I can absolutely say this was worse than the newborn period. Not only did I get basically no sleep, I was constantly worried I was doing something to make him worse. He spent a lot of time whining and crying, which began to get on my last nerve due to the sleep deprivation. He was so high-needs, in fact, that I ate basically nothing from Monday-Thursday, and I lost 6 lbs. in the first 3 days just because I never had time to eat. By Thursday, my sanity was hanging by a thread. I missed all my classes, I had very limited adult interaction, and for most of the day and night, I was totally on my own with a baby I couldn't figure out how to care for. It was hell. And it about broke me.

And now? I'm considering constructing a bubble so that we never have to go through this again.