a sick day

If you follow me on instagram then you've already seen/hear a lot of this, but I wanted to hash it out on the blog anyway.  Because sheesh.  I dealt with a whole lot of sick last week.  I'm gonna talk about puke.  Deal with it or move on :o).

I have spitty babies.  I'm no stranger to having regurgitated milk on my clothing at pretty much all times.  No idea why they can't handle their milk, but uh, they can't.  It's all good, I'm over it.  But I think prior to Friday Ryann had thrown up, like for real thrown up, maybe twice?  Like a vomit once, feel kind of crappy, but that's it kind of stuff.  Yeah, Thursday night Elsie was tossing her cookies, and by 5am on Friday it was Ryann's turn.

Let's start with Elsie.  We've had a few issues in the solids department in terms of her digestion, but the most terrifying has been now three severe vomiting episodes.  I talked about the first time a little bit here.  Oatmeal was the very first food we gave Elsie.  Ry never liked the rice cereal, it doesn't have a whole lot of nutritional value, so we just skipped it with Elsie and tried oatmeal.  She had it four days in a row without any problems.  We moved on to fruit and vegetable purees and didn't look back.  The first vomiting episode, discussed in the post linked above, happened after we thickened some prunes a little bit with oatmeal.  Roughly two hours after she ingested the oatmeal she began vomiting profusely, passing out between episodes, waking up only to vomit.  The entire thing lasted over an hour.

The second instance was the first time Elsie had mango.  We tried to give it to her, but the extremely thin texture seemed to bother her, so we added a little oatmeal (we hadn't yet made the connection, obviously).  Again, about two hours later she began vomiting.  This time was worse than the first, and lasted two hours.  It is so incredibly sad to watch.  You can tell she is in pain, and then just passes out.  Sometimes going limp while she is throwing up.  This time we made the connection to the oatmeal, and I started googling 'infant vomits after oatmeal'.  Suggestions were an immature digestive system, and FPIES (food protein induced enterocolitis syndrome).  Both ideas were/are valid.  Her system already seemed to be having a hard time processing the solids, so maybe her digestive system just wasn't ready.  But the severity and timing of the vomiting matched the description of FPIES.  She doesn't exhibit all of the systems though, and by no means is failing to thrive.

Of course I called the pediatrician and set up an appointment.  She wrote it off as an intolerance to oatmeal, told me not to give it to her again until at least one year of age, and suggested we use rice to thicken any purees we felt needed it.  I agree that she doesn't fit the entire bill of FPIES, and has been fine with all other foods, but it just didn't seem as simple as an 'oatmeal intolerance' to me.  I told Chris I wanted to try rice at some point before her 9 month appointment so we would know if it was just the oatmeal, and for some reason last Thursday I went for it.  I mixed a little rice in with her dinner and we went about the night as usual.  When it had been a little over two hours  I mentioned to Chris, "Yay!  We passed the two hour mark without any puking!"  Maybe five minutes later she woke up covered in vomit.  I was so sad.  Felt so guilty for doing that to her.  Thankfully this time it didn't seem quite as bad, but I made sure not to give her very much.

All three instances have occurred with Earth's Best brand products, so it is possible that it is something in that brand that is affecting her.  But at the same time, she was fine the first four times she had the oatmeal, so what does that mean?  I have no idea.  I won't be giving her any more infant cereals, and at this point we might just avoid grains all together for a while.  Her next appointment is November 8th, so I'll see what the pedi thinks then.

Moving on to Miss Ryann.  I believe we had finally gotten Elsie in bed around 11pm.  At 3am I woke up to Ryann crying in the hallway.  She said she needed to go potty.  I took her to the bathroom and then carried her back to her bed.  I was somewhat out of it, but noticed she felt a bit warm.  I thought maybe it was just because she had been asleep snuggled up in her covers.  She said her 'noggin hurt', but I tucked her in and told her sleep was the best medicine.  She passed back out.  Elsie woke up wanting to nurse around 4:15am.  Got her back to sleep.  Not long after I dozed off I was jolted awake by Ryann screaming again.  She had thrown up all over herself and her bed.  She was so hot.  I put her in the bath to rinse her off and cool her down while Chris took care of the bed.  I tried to convince her to go back to sleep, but 20 minutes later she was in the hallway saying her tummy hurt.  I started to grab towels and a bucket to get her set up on the couch when she started throwing up again.

She spent the next five hours vomiting, and then pretty much slept for the rest of the day.  She woke up around 7pm feeling much better.  She still had a fever, but was actually able to keep Tylenol down so it broke quickly.  We tucked her in around 9pm.  She showed up in our bedroom saying she wanted to cuddle so we let her in.  When Elsie woke up to nurse sometime after 4am, Ry wasn't in our bed anymore, she had gone back to her room to sleep.  She was back in our room at 5am saying she was ready to be awake.  We weren't all that surprised since she had slept so much the day before, so Chris told her to go to our family room and he'd meet her there.  A few minutes later he found her asleep on the couch.  She was still there when he left for work at 7am, but when I went to check on her at 7:30am she was asleep on the family room floor, where she stayed until almost 9am.  And she took more than a two hour nap that day.  Girlfriend was wiped.

Thankfully nobody else in the house got what Ry had, and we are all feeling MUCH better.  It is definitely the most sick Miss Ryann has ever been!