The barfs

So, what's the protocol when your daughter vomits all over the bathroom at Wal-Mart?

Poor Meg. We went Friday night to the super Wal-Mart so I could get a few groceries and some stocking stuffers (I also need to enjoy that she's still young enough I can slip those past her; Andy is starting to ask some serious questions about Santa). We hadn't made it past the produce section.

"My tummy full. I need to pee."
"Really? Because I just asked you before we left. But okay..."

So we abandon our cart and go into the bathroom. For some reason, I picked the handicapped stall. The toilet's too tall, but there's room for me to stand with her.

"I can't go!" She whines. And I start to get annoyed because she's doing this a lot lately when she wants a change of scenery. Not this time.
"Meg!"
"My tummy...." And then she proceeds to throw up forward all over the floor. Fortunately, she spares my clothes, but I'm looking around wondering how in the world I'm going to handle this. She then throws up another time. The first was all red, compliments of the "red" party at her school on Friday where everyone brought in something colored red. I know, good times.

By now, she's crying and I'm trying to comfort her without covering myself or stepping in the mess all over the floor while wondering if the barfs are done. After a brief assessment of the situation, I hang up my coat and purse, take off all her clothes and start cleaning her up in the sink. Naturally the other lady in the bathroom at Wal-Mart is as nice as she can be and is talking to Meg helping calm her down, too. I take off my sweater after I wipe her down and put it on her. I sneak out to get a plastic bag and put all her stuff in it -- clothes, jacket and shoes - and we make our exit. I do tell the manager at the check out that my daughter threw up in there. "It's okay," she says cheerfully. Clearly she's not going to be the one cleaning it up.

After we get home, she throws up a couple more times, mostly dry heaves. By the next morning, she's back to normal. Go figure.

Lots going on this week. My sister is having her ACL fixed tomorrow and my uncle with lung cancer is leaving his occupational rehab on Tuesday and my mom flying out to Odessa, Texas, and driving him him back to Dallas so she can better look after him. Please keep them in your thoughts. Oh, if that wasn't enough and then we have Christmas. I am mostly prepared. Mostly.

Edited to add that since I wrote this at 8:33 p.m., she went and threw up again. This time, all over Bjorn and the bathroom off the kitchen. I am hoping it's just that she drank some old milk she found (don't ask) but it could be an extension of Friday, strep or just one of those things. She doesn't have a fever, for now anyway.

Croup

Doesn't that look like fun? We had our first real bout of croup this weekend that turned into steroids and nebulizer treatments today, poor baby. What's amazing is how a few hours after her throwing up due to her inability to breathe, how fast medicine can turn it all around.

It started Saturday. I heard it in the morning, a slight bark, but dismissed it. Then she woke up from a nap coughing and crying. She had a fine evening and then a terrible, awful, very bad night. We took turns with her in our bed and the other sleeping in Andy's room (note to self -- Andy needs a new mattress that doesn't feel like I was in a sleeping bag outside it was so hard). I had talked to the doctor's the day before who said to give her half a teaspoon of Benadryl (generic of course thanks to the McNeil recall) and to come in the next day for a strep test.

Indeed on Mother's Day, I dragged my exhausted self and her to the doctor where we waited for nearly two hours for a quick strep test and a diagnosis of "Yep. It's croup." He also checked that it wasn't in her lungs and that it should improve. And you know, it really did improve. She took a long, four hour nap and then slept well, just waking up twice. In the morning, she seemed better even -- no fever either. But I got the call from my babysitter only an hour after drop off saying the cough made her nervous and she had a little fever. I picked her up and we went home for a nap. And she did nap except about an hour in she woke up, coughed, cried and promptly threw up all over me. It was awful, because she was scared, she was breathing faster, and because she was breathing faster, it was that much harder. It was just like watching an asthma attack. I called the doctor's immediately and was seen 20 minutes later and probably 20 minutes after that she was getting a nebulizer treatment followed by a steroid shot to reduce the inflammation in her trachea. We left with a prescription for prednisone to give her twice a day for two days and to come back Wednesday for another appointment.

You know, I really like our pediatrician, but sometimes his people skills. Well, yeah, not so much. "Don't worry. We won't let her slip away." Um? Slipping away? That didnt' even occur to me! "At least her trachea won't collapse like it does on some nine-month-olds." Yeah, that didn't occur to me either. At least his clinical skills are excellent. My baby went from blue lips to running around the living room saying, "Chasing, chasing, chasing!" as she follows her brother around. I can live with some sub par people skills if he can give that back to me.

Regression

So both kids are in the middle of some weird regressions. Meg has discovered waking up at night is fun! I suspect she's 1) teething 2) having dreams/nightmares 3) she thinks me straggling in to give her a sip of water, hold her for a minute and set her back down is comforing and 4) she thinks Mama looks best with bags under my eyes.

To make it more interesting, Andy has been wetting the bed a lot lately. It's weird how it happens. Since around Christmas, he will be fine for two or three weeks in a row with maybe one accident, then he goes like three or four nights in a row having accidents. Naturally him having an accident means he comes to my room and tells one of us (hopefully Bjorn) that he's had an accident. Sometimes he will have changed into new clothes and crawls into bed with us to then kick me the rest of the morning. Other times like today he came in at 2 a.m. needing help with new clothes and sheets. Poor guy was so exhausted he could barely sit up straight. I made him wear a pull-up after this. I explained to the extent I could that his body is growing right now and it's so busy growing overnight that it doesn't have the energy at the moment to tell him to wake up. We'll see how well that goes over tonight.

Adding to the fun is that Meg has had the barfs twice in a week. First instance was Wednesday afternoon so she was home Thursday (after waking up at 3 a.m. to throw up and then rally into such a good mood she was up until 5 a.m. just being happy. Crazy kid). Then yesterday out of nowhere she woke up from her nap and threw up on me. I gave her some Pedilyte and she threw that up later, too.

Needless to say, I'm sleepy today.

You know, I've been debating changing the title of this blog beacuse until recently, they were pretty good sleepers a lot of the time. It just didn't seem right. But now? Now I am in desperate need of a good night's rest.

In need of a shaman to kill the demon germs in the hosue

So now both kids are sick and with seemingly different things. Both had a fever Sunday. Andy had one yesterday, but Meg didn't. Andy took a nap, which was unusual and unusually long yesterday only to be up and down in the night and bouncing off the walls this morning. I sent him to school this morning and got a somewhat expected call in the afternoon that his fever returned so I went to get him. I took him home, medicated with Tylenol to restore his spirit somewhat (it worked) and gave him a bath.

As I'm giving him a bath, Ayesha calls to say Meg threw up after her nap. No big deal, she was sort of coughing some mucus from sleeping (normal for her). I explained what I was doing and would be there shortly. In that half hour, she called back to say Meg threw up two more times and had two diarrhea diapers. My poor baby.

I got her home and she gave some good dry heaves with bile on me and cried. I got her a bath and into her pajamas. I had every intention of spooning some Pedialyte into her slowly, but she was so thirsty and sad when I refused that I gave in and gave her about five ounces. Bjorn was able to get her to fall asleep on his shoulder about 6 p.m. and now we're working to get Andy off to bed early. I think I might turn in early myself.

If you have any home remedies or suggestions, please post. I can't find some of my baby health books. I seem to be losing books. Or my mind. Hard to say.

Meanwhile, I still don't have my camera hooked up to this computer. BUT I did get the scanner/printer installed and have been amusing myself by scanning in some old pictures and posting on Facebook, including this gem from Galveston circa 1991. Aren't we hot!

A bit of relief

So everyone had a better day yesterday. Meg went all day without throwing up and even had a few normal diapers in the middle of the day. She seems to have a bit of a runny nose, but I'm trying to ignore that for now. She even slept last night. Whoo-hoo!

Andy had a great day yesterday as Jennifer picked him up from school and took him to Build a Bear for his birthday. He returned home after a trip to the mall where he got a workman bunny named Bob (this kid doesn't win any awards for naming stuffed animals), a trip to Burger King followed by some ice cream.

I even got out for indoor soccer. I don't think I've made it to a game since before Christmas so I will be sore. The only person who didn't have a better day was Bjorn who had a rough day a work.

I'm hopeful this better patch lasts (although trying hard not to jinx it!) I have Andy's four year check up tomorrow and I'm meeting my friend Armando from New York for a late breakfast. Meg is going to Ayesha's so I can do all that and have some bonding time with the boy(s). It is sadly supposed to be frigid tomorrow, with highs in the 20s so I doubt we're going to be doing much tooling around Old Town, but it will be great see Armando. At least for that first five minutes before we realize we detest each other.

Please keep your fingers crossed this good spell lasts. I am ready for some normalcy! Well, until the inaugural next week which is throwing everything out of whack.

Pukey baby

It's been a long three weeks/month and Casa Bennett. Apparently my home has turned into a germ factory and young Margaret Anne has been its main target. Poor chicken has had three stomach bugs and two ear infections since we before we left for Dallas on the 19th. Her poor mother (i.e. me) is very, VERY sick of this and I am willing to beg, borrow and steal whatever it takes to make her well again.

The latest bout started on Saturday night when she threw up her dinner just after I put her to bed. Since then, she's been alternating between throwing up about once a day and having diarrhea. After numerous phone consultations with the pediatrician, I went ahead and took her in yesterday afternoon. We went through several possibilities and checked that she didn't have an ear infection (thank heavens, since more antibiotics might mess her tummy up more). They do want to test for a urinary tract infection on the off chance that could be causing her trouble. But generally, they think her stomach is raw from all the upset and just needs time to heal. The game plan we came up with is to temporarily stop dairy to give her a break. That means going ahead and stopping formula, which I was going to start doing in a few weeks anyway. Then once she recovers, we can add back in cheese and start whole milk. Fingers crossed.

This whole thing has been messing with her sleep, too. And now without being able to feed her at night, she's up and not ready to go down again. Once she's healthy again, we'll have to do some tough love to get back to normal.

The whole thing has been totally stressing me out. I finally even went to my doctor yesterday because I was getting so worked up that even when I was able to sleep, I couldn't and was feeling really anxious. I expected a prescription for Prozac or something, but instead got some Valium with the instructions to let Bjorn handle more. When we were in Dallas, Meg only wanted me so since then, I've just been jumping on even though Bjorn has offered to help. So last night, I took some medicine, went to bed at 8:30 and Bjorn got up with her from 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. He is quite a great guy, that Bjorn.

So, fingers crossed that this game plan works. And fingers crossed that she remembers how to sleep again! I could use some predictability back in my life. Well, until learns to walk and totally throws me for a loop again!

This and that

It's been over a week since operation binky removal began and I'm pleasantly surprised how well it went (knock wood, of course). Granted, the poor guy had to get strep throat and mouth ulcers last week that certainly made him not want to put anything in his mouth, thus breaking the familiarity of it, but still. He has so far only asked for it once and seemed okay with the explanation that he doesn't have a binky, he has a bike. I think if he were to get particularly tired and/or cranky, he might not take that so casually, but so far so good.

The kid's language skills continue to impress me. He's getting good at knowing that word starts with what letter so we make a game of it.

"Yogurt. Yuh-yuh-yogurt. What letter does that start with?"
"..."
"Andy, yogurt. Yuh-yuh-yogurt. What letter does that start with?"
"Y!"

Meg's fever has gone and she seems to be feeling better (again, knock wood.) What sucks is if her cough hits her just right, it makes her throw up like it did when she had a bad cold a couple of months ago. I was hoping that catching the ear infection and cold early would stop the cough from progressing that way, but I think she just has a hair trigger when it comes to that. I can only hope she eventually outgrows it and/or stops getting sick so often. In the meantime, I'll just have to plan to wear clothes that don't retain that fresh vomit smell.

Also notable this week, she now loves sleeping on her stomach. I put her to bed on her back and all when when I've come in after she's gone to sleep I find her on her belly. I think it helps her settle down now that she's not swaddled. I am hopeful this makes her head a little less flat, too.