Erin C's Diary Entries Diary Navigation: Choose A Diary Entry -------------------- Latest Entry: 3/21/01 -------------------- 3/9/01 2/23/01 2/23/01 1/23/01 1/14/01 1/2/01 12/13/00 -------------------- Erin C's Introduction

March 21, 2001

I’m drained – more drained than I’ve ever been before. Take that feeling and quadruple it – that is what my baby is feeling this very minute. He’s quietly sleeping though, so hopefully it is helping him regain his strength somewhat. I’ll tell you, the sleep he is getting now is better than any sleep he got in the hospital. Thank God we are home again – 24 hours in the hospital seemed like an eternity…

On Friday Tyler started having some diarrhea. He had had a shot that Thursday so I thought that maybe it was a reaction to that. The diarrhea continued mildly on Saturday and seemed to have calmed a bit on Sunday (except for the fact that Tyler had vomited once Sunday morning). All this time Tyler was barely eating anything and the only thing he really wanted to drink was milk – he’s addicted to it and when he’s older I bet if he has a choice between beer and milk he’ll choose the milk. Come Monday Tyler seemed to be doing better. He hadn’t had any diarrhea since Saturday night and was eating a small amount (dry toast and chicken broth) throughout the day on Monday. I was happy because he was a bit perky Monday morning. The whole weekend Tyler was somewhat lethargic, not wanting to play or smile, which broke my aching heart in to pieces. Tyler is one of those babies that can light up anyone’s day, even those mean, nasty people that don’t like children. If you’re down, he can change that in a minute. Usually, he never stops for a minute, is always exploring something new, and can never stop spouting that angelic sounding baby babble. It was a completely different story this weekend and when he didn’t want to play or even move, I new something was wrong.

Monday night came and at about 6pm the diarrhea came back and was worse than ever. He had gone diarrhea 11 times in one hour and was becoming severely dehydrated because he would not drink anything, even if I was standing on my head and making funny noises he would not take a drink. We began to notice that when he cried he really didn’t have any tears, he was hardly wetting his diapers, and his mouth was getting really dry. At 7:15pm we headed to the hospital for the longest night of our lives.

We got to the hospital at about 7:30pm, checked in, and were not seen by a doctor until 8:30pm. That’s modern medicine for you, go ahead and let a dehydrated baby wait in the waiting room for an hour (please don’t take any offense to that statement, the worry I have for my son has overtaken me and I’m ready to slap anyone who would even think of denying my son of anything). So, the minute the nurse walked in to the exam room the first thing she said was, “Well, you’re not going to like me when I have to start your IV.” That’s how dehydrated he was, she could tell the minute she looked at him. It had happened so fast, too. It took about half an hour before the ER doctor came in to look at Tyler and he knew that Tyler was going to have to be admitted. It was about another hour before they got the IV started.

I knew that I wouldn’t be able to handle it when they started the IV. Steve stayed in the room with Tyler and I HAD to leave because my heart was already hurting enough. It felt like an eternity that I waited outside that door, and as soon as the nurse left that room I ran back in there. Luckily she had numbed his hand, so he really was only crying because they had to hold him down. He reached out for me the second I walked back in to the room. His poor little arm had a support board taped underneath it and the little IV was taped to his arm. There went my heart again; I could feel it break in two.

After that traumatic experience (really the whole hospital visit was one traumatic experience after another) they had to draw blood. Oh how I tried to stay in that room with him, but the blood drawer that came in had a hard time getting a vein since he was dehydrated so I started to cry, again. I had to leave the room again because I COULD NOT take seeing him that way. I came back in and once the nurses left he had calmed a bit and just sank in to my arms. I practically held my baby that entire night, I didn’t want to let go of him because I knew how unbelievably scared he must have been. FINALLY, they had a room up in Pediatrics for us and we got up there at about 1:15AM. To top it off, they had to double us up in the room with another baby because Peds was packed with sick kids. Luckily, the child in our room was discharged at about 9am, but the night was horrible. After they took Tyler’s temp and weighed him they finally left us alone, and he just collapsed. I rocked him for about an hour, just because I wanted to hold him in my arms. I put him down in the crib and he slept for a while. He even slept through the kid next to us screaming for about half an hour. That shocked the hell out of me because the kid was extremely loud.

Steve had gone home at about 4am so at least one of us could get a few hours of decent sleep. He came back at about 6:45am so he could be there when they drew blood again. This time they had numbed the area where they were drawing blood, so it wasn’t nearly as bad. Plus, the phlebotomist that did it this time was MUCH better than the other. For the remainder of the morning and through early afternoon Tyler was still getting IV fluids and was not aloud to eat anything. Tyler finally saw a doctor at about 1:30pm (a LONG, frustrating story which I do not have the energy to write about). The doctor told us that we wouldn’t have results from the lab work for a few days because they were out of kits to check for rotavirus. He told us though that it didn’t matter which type of virus it was because they treat them all the same way. At that time we were told that Tyler could be taken off the IV fluids (although the IV was still left in his hands in case he couldn’t handle fluids orally) and that we had to try and get some Pedialyte in him and that we had to do it SLOWLY. Tyler would drink some here and there, but I think that he was so scared and just really did not want to be there and got himself too upset to drink.

By about 2pm Tyler was so incredibly exhausted and didn’t know what to do with himself. He kept yelling and would really scream if we wouldn’t take him out in the hallway. I honestly think that he hated that room. Finally, at about 2:45pm, he fell asleep. We laid him down and pulled up the side of the crib. Steve was on watch for any nurses that might come in to check a temp on him or something. I was going to collapse on the bed next to Tyler since I was going on ZERO sleep. I think I slept for an hour. Steve told me that a nurse had come in and told him that she needed to get his vitals and Steve told her no! So she just listened to his belly and said it sounded good and said she would come back later to check his temp. Thank God she understood! My mom and dad got there about 4:45pm and we were all sitting quietly on the other side of the room while Tyler slept. My mom had stopped and gotten Tyler a cherry slushy drink to see if he would drink that. I knew that the nurse would be coming back again soon and that she would have to get a temp. She came in at about 5 minutes to 5pm. She took his temp under his arm, hoping that it wouldn’t wake him, but it did and he wasn’t happy. From that point on he started yelling and didn’t want to go to anybody. We did manage to get him to drink the slushy, but he would only drink it if we put some in the straw and then let him suck it out. The nurse came back in and told us that the doctor said that if he was holding the fluids down well that we could go home. Tyler seemed to be doing good with what he was drinking, so it looked like we were on our way out of there. As soon as we told Tyler that we were going “Bye-Bye” he quieted down. He kept saying “bye – bye” too.

So, here we are – at home and comfortable and constantly trying to get Tyler to drink. He’s been doing well – been drinking a lot of Pedialyte and has actually managed to keep down 4 crackers and a piece of dry toast. I think tomorrow we are going to see if he can handle a bit of milk. He has an appointment at 8:45am tomorrow, so hopefully they will have the lab results by then and we can know for sure if this was in fact rotavirus. He’s still not totally himself. He’s sleeping a lot, but he did manage to play for about a half hour and even cracked a few smiles here and there. It is so incredibly hard seeing my baby like this. I’ve been praying so hard these past few days, just begging God to get my son healthy. I’ve been so scared and I keep saying over and over in my head that I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have my son. I can’t even begin to fathom a life without my Tyler. It’s a life that I can’t, won’t, and don’t want to fathom in the first place. But, he is recovering from the virus and hopefully tomorrow will be even better than today and the next day will be even better than that. Tyler’s being sick has been hard enough on me; I can’t even imagine what he must feel.

It’s been a tough weekend and beginning of the week. Steve and I caught up on our sleep because Tyler has been doing a lot of sleeping. I’ll be sure and let you all know how he’s doing. I have some pictures to post, but I think I’d rather email them to anyone who wants to see them since iParenting has been so bad about posting pictures. So, just give me your email on my Talk to Me board if you’d like to see them. They are from our one and only swim lesson that we have been able to go to so far. Next entry I’ll fill you in on how that went. We did have a blast – at least that is some good news that I have to report! I have to go. Tyler is asleep and I want to curl up in my PJ’s and just veg out and watch TV. Have a great week and PLEASE, stay healthy!

Erin