Sick, Again

THIS POST CONTAINS GRAPHIC CONTENT ABOUT VOMIT!

So... this past week I went back to James' old napping schedule - long nap in the morning, short nap in the afternoon - and guess what?! He started sleeping until 6:00-6:30 again! Yay! I'm just going to keep things like this now, and slowly move his morning nap later in the day - with a goal of one nap a day, from about 1:00pm-3:00pm. I'm in no rush with this though, because he seems to do well on his current schedule.

Thank goodness yesterday was a holiday, because it turned out to be a rotten day for James. He got his morning bottle when he woke up, and then proceeded to throw up the entire thing - plus extra, according to my husband. Thinking he just had a bought of sour tummy, I gave him his breakfast as per usual - only to have him throw all of that up (on the last bite of course), filling up his entire highchair tray. We cut him off entirely from food, and just tried giving him water. That seemed to keep him happy until lunch time, and he had no fever and was happy and energetic. He ate lunch happily, and just when I thought he might be over the worst of it, up came ALL of his lunch, and more. He appeared to want to keep eating though, so I let him have just his pears and water. He ate it all, and it stayed down. We decided we would still go out for lunch with Ryan's parents - as James appeared to be happy and doing alright at that time. En route to the restaurant he vomitted up all the pears. It is terribly gross no matter what, but a vomit in the car is really bad. It was all over his snowsuit, the carseat, the diaper bag - and us with no rags. We tried to clean up the best we could with Kleenex and wipes. Ew. We went for lunch anyway, and he did fine. Someone gave him a french fry though, and he had a little vomit from that. We made it home (as his tummy was now empty I'm sure), and got him down for a nap. After his nap things went downhill. He had a fever, and he threw up everything we gave him - even just sips of water. He was completely lethargic all afternoon, and we started to worry about dehydration. My parents were in the city, so we had them pick up some pedialyte for us. The afternoon proved to be a challenge, with several loads of laundry and many changes of clothing and such. It is heartbreaking to see your child sick like that. After supper he seemed to improve, and drank some of the pedialyte. We put him down to sleep at 9:00pm, only to rush into his room 15 minutes later because he had puked again. He was still sleeping, so we didn't disturb him - and simply removed the blanket with the small spot of vomit on it. We had layered his bed with blankets for that very reason. About an hour later he was screaming, and we went back into his room to find him and his bed soaked with vomit. All he had in his tummy was the little bit of pedialyte. Poor guy! We cleaned it all up, and he happily fell back into his crib to sleep. The night was rough. He was up every hour, and though we didn't have to go in to him each time I knew he wasn't getting much sleep, and neither were we. At about 4:30am he started crying, so Ryan went in with him. He gave him sips of pedialyte every few minutes, right until 7:00am. This morning James seems a little better, but still has a little bit of fever. He has kept down quite a bit of pedialyte, rice cookies and cereal. He is still unhappy though, and I have a concern that it may be his ears again. Anyway, hopefully the worst is over and he'll continue to improve through the day.