It's about that time of year, right?

The S Family has some sort of weird cosmic connection to Children's Hospital in mid to late June and early July. Last year it was obviously Jesse's surgery that kept us there. The year before that Isaac was hospitalized for 3 or 4 days with a nasty illness. And just to keep the pattern going, last night we spent the evening in the Children's Hospital ER with our darling baby Anna.

At about 5 pm yesterday Anna started throwing up. We did not think much of the first two times as she did not appear or act sick, did not have a fever and did not even seem all that upset about the fact that she threw up. We even tried to go out to dinner, thinking that it was just a wonky banana that her tummy rejected and that she would be fine.

If you happen to be one of the people who had the unfortunate pleasure of watching her vomit all over the restaurant floor...I AM SO SORRY! Send me a cleaning bill for your shoes, I feel really bad! My apologies also to the wait staff as under ordinary circumstances I would have cleaned up the mess myself. It was about this time that we realized we had something more significant than a rogue banana on our hands and I left without so much as an apology or an offer to clean up my child's vomit myself. Again, I AM SO SORRY!!

Anna continued to vomit about once every 10 to 15 minutes throughout the evening. In consultation with our pediatrician and at about 8:30 when she started getting pale and listless, we headed for the ER.

I will spare you the gory details, but we became more and more concerned as the appearance of the vomit started changing. By this time she was VERY upset at the intensity of her vomiting but falling asleep between vomits because she was so tired. Poor, sweet baby girl.

The er staff refrained from giving her an IV, for which I am eternally grateful. They let us try syringes of Pedialyte every few minutes until she finally stopped vomiting. She evidenced no symptoms other than a nasty virus that hit her really hard. For most of this time, she was not even running a fever.

She did have a rough night and I am sure we will all be pretty tired today. Around 1 AM I broke down and decided to ignore the doctor's directions about not nursing her until morning. Anna nurses to sleep, always has, and she just could not get herself settled down. I am now very glad I chose to ignore those directions, as my good friends at La Leche League tell me that breast milk is actually NOT considered a dairy product and is therefore not irritating to an upset tummy as cow's milk might be.

This morning she is acting a bit run down, though she is currently swatting at my hands as I type which means, "Mommy get off that thing and pay attention to me!"

Guess I better run, have a great day!

Update: She just went down for her nap about 2 hours early. She kept putting her head down on my shoulder. She refused to nurse before her nap, unheard of for Anna. She just let me put her in her bed, rolled over and closed her eyes. I don't think she is feeling all that great.