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Saturday Feature: Mistakes – Vomit Edition

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Every Saturday I bring you a parenting mistake my husband and I have made. Please have a laugh or cry at our expense — we really are good parents, I swear.

Typically, Nora bounces back from illness pretty quickly.  So, my mistake this week involves over-estimating her immune system, under-estimating the nastiness of the Coxsackie virus, and paying the price by being repeatedly soaked in vomit. 

Nora loves to eat, as I believe I’ve mentioned before.  During the worst part of her illness, she had virtually no appetite, so when she started asking for food, I assumed she was on the mend and an appetite meant she could hold down food.  Silly me.  Every time I thought she had turned the corner, she’d puke again.  I took her back in to the doctor’s office on Wednesday and got a scolding for starting her on solids again too quickly. I explained that the discharge instructions from the emergency room said eating was an important part of rehydration and she should not “rest the bowels.”  The not-our-regular-doctor doctor told me that actually meant that I shouldn’t be feeding her and they were saying the same thing he was, but using the words differently.  Huh?  He also gave me a list of things she could have, which included stuff I’d never give  her when she’s healthy like Gatoraide and Seven-Up.  I wrote him off as an old-school quack, but did return to more conservative foods, like broth and saltines.

On Wednesday night, I made a steak dinner for Ben and I. Nora registered her protest by giving me the stink eye and stacatto moaning, “AH! AH! AH!” through the entire meal.  By Thursday morning she was saying she felt better just so I’d give her some cereal and strawberries.  

She was so desperate for real food she nearly threw a Pedialite popsicle at me.  Thankfully, naptimes were lengthened.  They were my only respite.

 

Fair Warning

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Parents don’t usually get much warning from their kids when something important is about to happen. Or maybe they’re too tired to notice warnings. This morning, Nora, who appeared to be on the mend, was sitting in my lap eating yogurt and suddenly vomited down the front of my shirt.

Things are getting busy around here. I’ll likely be taking a business trip in April. And in May, I’ll be taking over most of the duties of a co-worker who’s being deployed (don’t worry, he’s going to Spain). I’m thinking six posts a week on this blog may be expecting a bit too much of myself. So, I’m putting my five regular readers on notice: I’m going down to four posts a week. Probably something like, Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. And maybe a picture or great link on the off days, but no promises.

Speaking of great links, I caught part of a story on NPR the other day on rule making for kids. Turns out, in almost every culture, when parents make rules that encroach on a child’s privacy, the child rebels. Takes look, it’s food for thought.

Coxsackie Strikes

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Saturday Nora woke up with a runny nose.  By the afternoon, she had a fever of 102.7.  Early Sunday morning, around 1:00am, she started vomiting.  Suddenly, I remembered the memo that was posted on the door to the toddler classroom at daycare.  “We wanted to inform you that a child in this classroom has a confirmed case of Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease…”

I know, this disease sounds scary as hell.  As I learned in the emergency room on Sunday morning, it’s a virus like any other, only is gets a name because it can cause sores on the hands, foot and mouth, and a rash on the cheeks.  The official name of the virus is Cocksackie.  I took Nora in because she could not keep anything down.  We’d give her a tiny sip of Pedialite and five minutes later it would come right back up.  She had chapped lips, and I was freaked out about dehydration.  Last summer, my husband had to get an IV to stop severe dehydration due to food poisoning. 

I’m always wary of over-reacting, but I’m glad we took her in, she was beginning to dehydrate (but wasn’t bad yet).  They gave her a medication called Zofran, which stops nausea and vomiting (it was originally used for people undergoing chemotherapy).

The nurse in the ER told me that if she could make one change to the health care system, it would be to make Zofran available over the counter.  She said stopping vomiting and the accompanying dehydration could dramatically reduce the number of visits to emergency rooms.  She was planning to write a letter to Obama about it.  You go, Nurse Laura!

I am home with Nora today, she still has diarrhea, but no more vomiting.   My husband had the genius stroke of suggesting she wear pull-ups until the diarrhea gets better.  We were both shocked when she consented. She’s drinking Pedialite out of a wine glass and getting lots of rest. It’s tough seeing our little fireball reduced to an ember; we’re looking forward to her speedy recovery.

Dirty Tissue or Aromatherapy?

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Parents are not easily grossed out.  I remember the first time my daughter got the stomach flu, it didn’t even occur to me to be disgusted when she covered my shirt in vomit and then nestled into it.  In fact, sometimes what is gross to a childless person provides comfort to parents; the freely moving bowels of your child, for example.

My daughter’s daycare is just two blocks from my office.  When she was an infant, I would breastfeed her at lunch time.  Naturally, I was always equipped with a pocket full of clean tissues to catch spit-up.  One day, having returned to my office from a feeding, I found a tissue soiled with spit-up in my pocket.  Some force of nature compelled me to sniff it.  It was a sensory delight!  It smelled exactly like my girl.  My eyes filled with tears and instead of throwing the tissue in the trash, I stuffed it back into the pocket of my trousers; saving it for another surreptitious sniff.