Wednesday, September 26
I was putting Merit to bed. Josh was at worship practice and Lee was laying on Merit's bed with us. Both boys had just been bathed. I looked at Lee just as he was about to spit up. Out came a mouthful of milk. It had happened so many times before. I cleaned it up with a towel and thought to myself about how he always seems to do this when he or I have just bathed. All babies spit up sometimes. So I put both boys to bed. I chose not to worry about it and straightened up the house before josh got home.
Thursday, September 27
When I got Lee up in the morning, I found he had spit up again in the night. It was mostly yellow. This had been happening many times since he was born so I was not overly concerned, and he already had a well baby visit scheduled. I nursed him. He spit up again. He seemed happy. He did not spit up again during his visit. I took his sleeper along to show the doctor the color, as we had been discussing the color and what color was a bad sign. Yellow or green could mean something was wrong. Since it had happened before and he was fine, we decided to wait. If he continued to have episodes, she wanted a radiology work up of his intestinal organs done in the next couple months. I was in denial. I feared the worst but wanted them to tell me there was nothing to worry about. He continued to throw up the rest of the day. Often it was just milk, after I fed him. We were much less concerned about spitting up milk than bile. He seemed a little sick but had no fever. I actually had a headache and felt nauseated too. Many calls to the doctors later and they said we probably both had a bug. He would display more symptoms because he was smaller. Other times when lee was spitting up, he would be delayed in bowel movements. It was the case this day too. Finally in the evening he had a normal BM. I thought he would be better soon. He continued to get sicker.
Friday, September 28
Lee continued to be sick during the night. He mainly threw up when I tried to feed him. He would cry out. We both slept in the living room with the tv on. It distracted him and we both dosed off and on.
The next day was more of the same. I knew he was sick, but there was no indication of how bad he was. Everybody gets sick sometimes. All babies spit up sometimes. If he has a bug, vomiting is normal. If the doctor thought it was anything serious, they would send us to the hospital.
We had things to watch for: wet diapers, behaviors. It shouldn't get worse they said. Looking back, it had gotten worse, but at the time it didn't seem like it was that much worse.
[I don't blame our pediatrician and plan to continue seeing her. While part of me will always wonder "what if" we had gone in sooner, I don't think anyone thought it was this bad, even once we were in the hospital. Josh and I are Lee's parent and made the final decision about when to go in - we don't feel like the pediatrician should have done anything different]
Later that evening some friends brought us dinner and hung out. Lee was lethargic. He cried and he moaned. He vomitted whenever I tried to nurse him, but I kept trying because he needed the hydration. He wasn't interested. It seems normal for someone with a stomach bug to not want to eat, to be sleepy.
I finally put him to bed. I was really worried about him but figured I was over reacting. I had been really worried during his other 'episodes' and everything was always ok. This time seemed different because he didn't want to nurse, but it all fit the bill for a stomach bug. Everyone gets sick sometimes.
I went to check on him before going to bed and could smell his diaper when I reached he hallway. It was awful. It was full of blood. I called josh in. We took pictures and changed him. We were on the phone with the doc and grabbing some essentials to take. We barely talked about it, but we were headed to the ER. Our friends were coming back to stay since Merit was sleeping and our doctor called ahead for us.
The night was long and weird. It was a lot of waiting. Lee was so tired. I was so tired. He wasn't wearing any clothes because he had been spitting up so much -I had been using towels for blankets to clean him up. An ultrasound showed intussusception. They did an air enema which showed nothing and admitted us to a unit. They said sometimes intussusception corrects itself. The most notable thing in hindsight is that the tech couldn't get the live X-ray image right. The doc kept telling her to flip it. We all thought it was the machines.
We were in the ER from 10:30p to 6:30a.
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