Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Be careful what you wish for

Yesterday I was tired and grumpy, and wishing for a day off. I didn't sleep well the night before, having had too much caffeine before bed and waking up with a hungry baby overnight. Work was kind of boring--I had lots of small tasks and none of them were particularly interesting or challenging. Tuesdays Charlotte has dance class at 5:30 in the evening, and neither the time nor the day are convenient. My husband plays in a a wallyball league at that time, so it falls to me to pick the kids up from daycare, get Charlotte dressed, get her a snack, and be ready to dance at 5:30. That's a stretch for me, as I have to leave work by 4:30, which means I have to be in and ready to work by 8 or 8:30, assuming I plan to eat lunch at my desk, earlier if I don't (yeah, right, like I ever go out to lunch...). That doesn't sound so early, except that I'm already up as early as I can drag myself out of bed in the morning (around 6:30), and after showering, feeding the baby, getting kids dressed (with help, but still), packing bags, I usually have to pack my breakfast and eat that at my desk at work also, and I'm still lucky to leave the house by 8am.

Today, I'm getting my day off. To be exact, I am not at work and I am not home with two kids. I am home with one kid, who is sick. Trystan woke up coughing this morning, and coughed so hard he was gagging. He then threw up his breastmilk the first two times I attempted to let him nurse, and threw up several more times in between coughing. He has been constipated, which is a really bad thing for a kid with his medical history, and so I was planning to call a pediatrician this morning to ask about baby-safe laxatives or stool softeners anyway. The throwing up is worrisome with his history of bowel obstruction, so I've called both my pediatrician and the surgeon's office for direction on where I'm taking him today.

A little before 9, Trystan demanded to nurse again, so I gritted my teeth and let him, bracing for the spew. Much to my surprise, he has kept it down so far (a whole 30 minutes), and is sleeping. He has an 11am appointment with the ped, and I'm watching TV, blogging, and doing laundry. Blech.

2 comments:

Amanda said...

Hope he feels better soon.

BriteLady said...

The throwing up appears to be either a run of the mill stomach virus, or, more likely, nausea coming from excessive sinus drainage. Forgive the blunt descriptions, but every time he has puked today, it's been watery and mucous-y, and somewhat milky. Right before he throws up, he looks nauseous and has a lot of saliva. We've all been fighting colds, and my husband said that he had copious amounts of sinus drainage over the last couple of days. That hitting an empty stomach plus a cough = very yucky.

Since this morning, he's only thrown up 2 more times--one in the car on the way home from the pediatrician's office, and one in the evening when my husband put him in the swing for a couple of minutes. I think motion was not his friend.

He kept some bites of bread and more breastmilk down around dinner time, but he has refused to even consider pedialyte. I have my fingers crossed that we're at the end of his issues, or at least close enough to it.

The bright spot here: after a day of pretty much nothing but breastmilk to eat, his constipation is beginning to ease a bit (though if it's a stomach virus, I fear we may start the diaper-blowout-phase tomorrow)...