Collin's First Trip to the ER...and it wasn't for playing too rough :)

Well, for those of you that are around Collin quite a bit, you might be surprised to learn that his first trip to the Emergency Room wasn't for playing too rough! Yes, that's right. We had to go to the ER just a couple of days ago. This is a rather long, but interesting, story so try to keep up! :)

Last Thursday when I picked Collin up from daycare, Ms. Amelia warned me to keep an eye on him because she had to send a couple of kids home after (what appeared to be) a stomach bug created lots of vomiting. "Oh, great," I thought. We've never really experienced vomiting with Collin, so this was going to be lots of fun if he actually caught the bug, too. Sure enough, around 5 a.m. Friday morning, Collin woke up vomiting (all over me, I should add). Did it gross me out? Not really. I was more worried about him at that point and didn't have a lot of time to get too disgusted with the actual vomit. When he finished, he started clapping. It was kind of funny. I am not sure if he was clapping for himself or clapping because it was over -- maybe he just felt better. :) I, on the other hand, wanted to cry. I felt sorry for the little fella! After we both had a bath, I tried to get Collin back to sleep. I knew he was still sleepy. After sleeping for a few more hours, Collin was up and ready to play. I was happy, thinking maybe the vomiting was over. Boy, was I wrong. Another episode occurred a little later in the day. Later that night Collin acted like he felt better, but he still wouldn't eat or drink much.

Saturday morning we woke up to find Collin burning up. He had a fever. JUST GREAT! His stomach is giving him problems and now he has a fever. I quickly gave him some Motrin to try and get the fever under control. Speaking of Motrin, we have to buy the Children's Motrin since the Infant's Motrin is for babies up to 26 lbs. :) After listening to Collin whine for about 30 minutes, we decided to make him a doctor's appointment. Just a short time later, we found out from the doctor that Collin had an ear infection. Poor guy! Can anything else go wrong? We got the prescription filled and headed home. Once we got home Collin still didn't want to eat or drink anything. We had to "trick" him into drinking something by dropping it in his mouth with a straw -- this is usually what we do when we give him a little of our drink. Saturday night finally rolled around. I don't even know what to say about Saturday night, but if you were within 50 feet of our house, you probably would have heard Collin screaming at the top of his lungs. We tried everything to calm him down - nothing worked. Finally, we decided to see if going for a ride in the car would help. For the first 5 minutes, Collin was quiet. The rest of the ride was spent listening to him scream. It was awful. We knew his ear was probably bothering him, but there wasn't a whole lot we could do other than give him Motrin. We knew it would take the antibiotic a little time to kick in. Eventually, Collin went to sleep and we tried to get a little rest, too.

Other than the 1:30 a.m. vomiting episode, Sunday started out pretty good. Collin seemed to be in a good mood and acted as if he were starting to feel a little better (notice the recurring theme here? He kept going from bad to good so I kept thinking he was getting better, but he wasn't!). Chauncey's parents came over for lunch and Collin managed to play a little, but he wasn't nearly as "spunky" as he usually is when his grandparents are around. Sunday night was another long night. As with anyone who is sick, it always seems to get worse at night. Collin was no different. I attempted to go to bed, but Collin was not happy laying down, so I ended up sitting on the couch with him all night. By Monday morning, I was exhausted. I decided to keep him home from daycare again, so Chauncey and I both stayed at home with him.

By midday Monday, we were both getting a little concerned because we couldn't get Collin to drink much. We bought popsicles, Pedia-lyte, juice, etc...Collin turned his nose up at all of it. Surprisingly, Collin managed to play and get into things around the house Monday. Even though he wouldn't eat or drink anything, it appeared that he was feeling okay. Around 7 p.m. I gave him a bath, thinking that he would be okay for daycare Tuesday. After his bath I decided to try and feed him a little bit. He seemed excited to eat this time (which made me excited that he wanted to eat). After eating 4 or 5 bites, up it came. MAN! We headed back to the bathtub for another bath. I waited another hour or so and gave Collin a bottle to see if that would help since I knew he was hungry. He drank all of the bottle and laid down to go to sleep. He tossed and turned for so long that I figured he must need to burp or something. I picked him up and guess what happened? He vomited everywhere...again! We headed back to the bathtub for a 3rd bath. At this point, Chauncey and I were both worn out. I knew Collin wasn't going to daycare, so I called his grandpa to see if he would keep him while I worked Tuesday.

Tuesday morning was the first time it really hit me that Collin wasn't getting any better. First of all, when he woke up he didn't even try to sit up or anything. He just laid on the bed. He didn't smile. He didn't want to play. He didn't even respond much to us when we were talking to him. This was definitely out of character for Collin. He ended up falling asleep in the car on the way to his grandparents house and when I called to check on him after I made it to work, he was still sleeping. I made a call to the doctor's office and they asked me to bring him in. While we were at the doctor's office, Collin still refused to drink anything. The doctor thought it might be in his best interest to get to the ER for an IV with fluids. She didn't think the dehydration was too severe, but since he isn't old enough to explain, "you really need to drink this so you will feel better," it was best to get the fluids in him through an IV. While I thought I would be an emotional wreck about going to the ER, I wasn't (I already had my emotional breakdown earlier that morning when I talked to my parents). I think I was finally relieved to know that Collin was going to get some fluids in his body and hopefully start feeling better. We spent several hours at the ER and I won't go into all of the details about that trip. It is important to point out that he looked so pitiful with his little hospital gown and the IV taped down on his little foot. They had to stick him 4 or 5 times to find a good vein. :( The only funny thing about the ER was when the doctor asked another hospital employee how old he thought Collin was -- the guy responded, "about 2 years old, isn't he?" The doctor laughed and told him that he was only 10 months old. The guy responded, "are you kidding? my son is about the same age as him...I sure hope he doesn't run into him anywhere!" Collin was a little trooper and ended up falling asleep. As he slept, I thought to myself how fortunate we were to only be there for something so minor. I can only imagine how awful it must feel as a parent to stay in the hospital with your child when it's something terminal or life threatening. As terrible as I felt for Collin, I felt so blessed to know that he was healthy and going to leave the hospital within a few hours.

Collin did great Tuesday night and finally returned to daycare Wednesday. He did have another vomiting episode Wednesday night, but I think he just ate too much, too soon. He seemed perfectly fine this morning. We will see how tonight goes. :) It looks like the worst part is over, but I don't want to sound too confident just yet!

On another note, Collin is definitely walking. He will walk 5 or 6 steps before plopping down. Most of the time he stops on purpose so he can crawl to whatever it is he is trying to get to. I am pretty certain his crawling days are numbered. Thank goodness! We are getting tired of toting our 30 pound little man around on our hip everywhere we go! :)

That's it for now....more to come soon.