My Little Trooper

Well, there's a first time for everything, and last night was one of our firsts. It was our first time taking Isabelle to the ER. From what I hear other mothers say of their experiences, this will only be the first of many....oh boy.

Yesterday, when Isabelle woke up, she was making these weird gurggling noises, and didn't act very interested in her bottle, but other than that, she seemed fine. Then someone (who shall remain nameless) was letting her stand up beside the couch on her own. She let go of the couch and "crash!" she fell to the floor and hit her head. She cried really loudly and then immediately starting throwing up. She finally calmed down, so we tried to give her the bottle again. She drank the rest of it, but then immediately threw it up...so we decided to skip church and go to the emergency room. The triage nurse checked her vitals and they were all fine...no temperature or anything, and no bumps or bruises on her head. So basically that meant it would be a while before we were seen. Isabelle was being her normal self in the waiting room (laughing, smiling, playing) so we decided to take her home after an hour and a half of waiting and just monitor her from home.

She took a nap on the way home (the triage nurse said it was fine for her to go to sleep). Then at home, she took 4 oz. of formula. She kept that down fine after 30 minutes, so we gave her another 4 oz, and she kept that down just fine too. We had been planning to go to Christiansburg to see Ben's mom(45 min. or so drive), and since she seemed to be alright, we decided to go ahead and go. She was doing fine when we got there, so we decided to leave her there for a little while and go run an errand. Ben's mom called while we were gone and said she had thrown up again, so we went and bought some pedialyte and went back to her house. Isabelle was still acting herself, and was not running a fever. We gave her a little pedialyte and decided to go to church....yeah, that was a bad idea. I was holding her in my lap and as we're singing, suddenly I have warm orange goo all over my lap. We left church and went back to Ben's mom's house. We gave her a little pedialyte, but she could not keep it down, so we decided to take her BACK to the ER. We were afraid she would get dehydrated. She threw up three times in the car on the way to the ER, and was having dry heaves while we were in the waiting room.

She was such a trooper!! When we got there, it was already past her bedtime, and her and I both had throw up all over us. We only had to wait around an hour and a half for her to be seen. Since she had fallen that morning and hit her head, they decided to do a scan of her head. It came back normal. So they did an xray of her tummy to make sure there were no blockages in her intestine causing her to throw up. That came back normal, too. We had given her a couple syringes full of pedialyte while we were back there, and she was keeping that down, and acting like her normal self, other than being very tired and cranky.

So finally, they took some blood so they could check for an infection and make sure she wasn't dehydrated. They went ahead and put in an IV while they were taking the blood, so they wouldn't have to stick her again if she was dehydrated. Poor baby!! Of course she didn't like that part! She gave Ben and I the most pitiful looks, like she was saying "save me!" My precious baby's little chubby arm looked so pitiful with the IV and washcloth-splint on it. When they were done with that, it was already around 11:30pm, so she was exhausted! We turned the lights off in our room and she fell asleep in my arms for about 30 minutes. The blood results came back normal too; no dehydration or infections. So after all that agony, it turned out to be just a VIRUS!! Something that we probably could have kept her at home for, but it is better to be safe than sorry...

She seems to be feeling a lot better this morning, but you can tell she is wiped out from such an eventful day yesterday!! I am slowly giving her more and more liquids...no solids yet. And she is keeping it all down so far...so hopefully it was just a 24 hour thing. Anyway, I am so proud of her for being such a trooper yesterday. I can tell she is going to be a strong girl!