Poor Monkey's Stomach Virus

This weekend has not been fun for poor Lil' Monkey. Last night, he went to bed at his usual time of 7:30 but little over 2 hours later we heard gurgled cries from his room. I went into the room and noticed something funny about his face (the only light we have in the room is very dim, on purpose). I felt his face and around his little wiggly body to realize that he had vomited EVERYWHERE. His face was in a pile of it and there were two more piles elsewhere in the crib. Practically the whole mattress was covered in it.

After turning on the hall light, I lifted him out and realized it was ALL OVER his poor little face! His eyelids and lashes were covered; it was in his nose, his ears and all down one arm. So I rushed to get his clothes off of him and yelled for DH to get off of The Game (I may be posting about this later) and help me with this mess.

It smelled awful and was the color of salmon (makes sense since he had carrots and bananas yesterday). Monkey was so upset and it took a lot for me not to cry at that moment due to the wretched smell and extreme empathy for him.

So after cleaning him up, putting a new sleeper on and breastfeeding him, changing his sheet and mattress pad, we put him back to bed. I could tell he was miserable and felt bad because he just lay in his crib afterward staring into space as I stroked his back and petted his head. Meanwhile, I'm having an inner struggle not to panic because I've inherited the worry-wart gene from my mother and find that my reactions are little severe sometimes when compared to others.

About hour and half later, he's crying again. I go into his room and this time, the bed is just wet. Really wet. No color just wetness. He had thrown up all of the breast milk which left about a 2 X 3 foot area of the mattress soaked, not to mention all of one side of the new sleeper. Out of the crib he comes and as I'm putting him down on the changing pad, he starts vomiting some more. I couldn't help but say "Oh my God" as it went all down the front of him and all over my shoulder, which alerted DH that something was wrong (he later protested this as I'm supposed to save those type of exclamations for broken legs and what he considers really serious problems). Then as I'm trying to quickly get the sleeper off of him, he pukes again all over the changing table -- this time with more salmon colored stuff. His little body was shaking as he did it and I could see the sheer terror in his eyes because he clearly didn't understand what was happening to him. So again, I yell for DH to get off The Game (apparently even though that type of exclamation is supposed to be saved for extreme emergencies it still wasn't enough to pull him away).

So I undress him, and while DH hoses him down in the tub, I take off the changing pad cover and wipe the whole thing down with disinfectant, wipe down the outside of his mattress with the disinfectant, change the sheet and mattress pad cover ("we're now down to 1 clean mattress pad cover", I note in my head), and we get him dressed again. This time he's in a onesie and pants since we figured this might give us chance to change only the onesie and save the pants. All of this accomplished within I'd say 7 minutes.

At this point, I'm ready to call the doctor or take him to the emergency room. So I call the answering service for our pediatrician and ask him to call us. Tom does some research on the Interweb. I read about vomiting in one of the 3 books we have on babies. And we wait.

Ten minutes later, Monkey is crying again and this time, he's pooped his pants. Only it's NOT really POOP but greenish, nauseous smelling watery stuff. And yes, it's ON the mattress. So out he comes, we wipe him down, we change his onesie AND HIS PANTS (so much for that plan), and I change the bed and mattress pad one more time.

We finally decide that maybe we'll just breastfeed him for a minute or two and see how that stays down since he's acting like he's starving. Then as I'm holding him upright after that feeding, he pukes again. New outfit!

By this time an hour has passed with no call from the pediatrician's office. So I call the service again. About 5 minutes later, the doctor finally calls. DH talks to him and he suggests that we go get Pedialyte (which we figured he would since we had already read this and I had already figured out which grocery store near us is open 24 hours). DH runs to our Harris Teeter, gets the fluid and we give lil' Monkey some.

Luckily THAT stayed down and Monkey only had diarrhea one more time prior to going to bed. He slept until 8 this morning which is 2 hours longer than usual but that was good for us since we were up later with him. I felt like a wondering zombie most of last night after the drama was over. I was still pretty tired when we got up this morning as well.

He had some more diarrhea at some point in the night and we had to change him again when he woke up, but lucky for me, only the sheet bit the dust this time. We took him to the doctor this morning and they said to continue with the Pedialyte until this afternoon and try a little bit of breast milk again. If that stays down, we're good. And so far, it has so we are all relieved. However, the doctor said he might have diarrhea for 7-10 more days! I hope not. I'm sure I'll be keeping everyone posted on that one. My poor hands are already cracked and bleeding from all of the hand washing I've been doing lately. I'm just glad things are looking up for lil' Monkey.