When a child gets sick, especially a little one, it is usually at least disruptive. Our recent ordeal with being sick, however, just absolutely sent the whole family in a tail-spin and through the wringer! It all started with a lovely vacation to the snow...
Along with my mom, Paul's sisters, and a cousin and their families, a total of about 20 people, we trekked up to a rented cabin near my sister's place in Tahoe. A weekend filled with the promise of bonding with family and frolicking in the snow - something Ava in particular had been requesting since mid-January. One slight concern: my sister had just recovered from the stomach flu. Our remedy was to just not visit her for 24-hours.
The weather was great! Snow flurries gave the kids the essence and excitement of magic while it was still too little to prove any inconvenience for driving or shoveling. Our cabin had snow up to the 2nd story balcony, so with just a quick hop out of the family room, kids and dads (bigger kids) were quickly enjoying making snowballs and sledding down little bunny hills. All was wonderful for the first 36-hours.
Then, in the middle of Saturday night, Ava woke up saying her tummy hurt and quickly started to get sick. "Must have been the chocolate you let her have," my husband tells me. "Must have been all the sledding with no nap," I think as we argue and pull off bedsheets, trying frantically to clean up. Fifteen minutes later, she's at it again. Ah! It's clearly neither. It's Aunt Ainsley's stomach flu!! Poor Ava is up every 40-minutes all night long. Finally, at around 6am, she sleeps. The upside to the night is that she's become an expert of where to put the "yuckies" when they come. This is good, especially considering that our rental didn't come with spare bed sheets. We've gone through all the bed sheets on the bed as well as all the spare towels from the bathroom. I had to do 2-loads of laundry during the night.
All seems well for the car ride home. However, for some strange reason, I'm getting all sorts of Braxton-Hicks contractions. They arrive every 3-5 minutes, so I call the on-call nurse. I'm instructed to lie down when we get home, drink lots of water, and count contractions for an hour. "Don't get up," she says. Paul busily unpacks while I lay down and count. About 45-minutes into my hour, Ava comes in. "My bee-boo hurts again, Mommy," Ava says. I call for Paul, hoping he can take her to the bathroom. He's not listening. I tell Ava to find Daddy. She goes halfway down the hall and comes back again to throw up all over me and the bed. Oh, man. So much for my hour. I strip the bed, myself and her and start another 2-loads of laundry, hoping that everything will be clean before we go to sleep. After a second hour of counting, the contractions get better, but aren't quiet enough for the nurse who instructs me to check into OB Emergency at the hospital for observation. They continue to lighten at the hospital and they release me, telling me to call my doctor in the morning for more instructions.
I go home, dog tired, and crawl into bed, praying that Ava is done with her sickness. Seems to be only a 6-8 hour thing. I call the doctor's office in the morning and they ask I come in tomorrow for a fetal Fibronetrin test (fFN). I switch gears and after unpacking from the trip, start lunch for the girls. Bettina is slow to the kitchen and is sort of mopily wandering around the table complaining that she's not hungry. She starts holding her tummy and whining and it's all the sudden very clear -- I pick her up, almost soon enough, and throw her over the kitchen sink. Round #2 starts with Bettina. She continues until just after Daddy gets home. No one eats much of a dinner and we all go to bed early.
Life seems calm until I wake up suddenly at 3am. If the last thing I wanted was to get the stomach flu being 8-months pregnant, well, too bad. I'm up all night and well into the morning. I call the doctor to see if they still want me to come in now that I'm sick and probably contagious. Yes, they answer - it's very important. Paul tries his best to stay at home more today and bounces in and out of the house and the office. He bounces in again in time to let his mother in to take care of the girls while I go to the doctor's. I'm glad he's there since, while brushing my teeth, I found I suddenly needed to spend more time next to the toilet.
Miserably, I make my way to the doctor's. Unfortunately, I find that my doctor has just been called to the hospital with not one, but three patients who need her. Who knows when she'll come back. The receptionist says she'll put me in with another doctor. Even though I remind her I'm sick and ask to be put at the top of the list, I watch 4 other people get called into exam rooms. It's been an hour. Finally, after threatening to leave to come back another day, I'm ushered in to meet a new doctor. She gives me the test but shows concern about my urine sample -- too much protein which means my kidneys are compromised. After ruling out pre-clampsia, she decides I might be really dehydrated and sends me down for more tests fearing I might have to be hospitalized over-night. She'll call me in a few hours with the results and to tell me whether or not I'm hospital-bound.
Well, I didn't get the call from her last night, so I stayed home. We all slept well. The new doctor did call this morning with the results. She said, "Well, the tests came back worse that I thought. Had I talked to you last night, we definitely would have admitted you to the hospital." She then wanted me to come in for an IV bag of fluids until I convinced her I hadn't been sick since and would likely come out normal very soon.
So, three and a half days later, we're starting to rebound. Now it's to attend to all the gorcery shopping, house cleaning and laundry that's been ignored throughout. A spring cleaning of sorts. Glad it's all in the rear-view mirror!!
