Clocking in Hospital Night #358

My sweet baby in need of FLUID!

Well, our “overnight hospital stay” ticker on my blog has been holding stead at 357 since JUNE of last year.

Looks like we’re jumping to 358.

After almost 5 days of dealing with Annabelle’s very severe GI bug, I woke up this morning to a much worse looking Annabelle. Her eyes were sunken in, she had no tears when she cried, and when I gave her a bath, I could see all her sweet little ribs, and she wouldn’t stop crying.

To the ER we went.

At first, I was berating myself for waiting so long. but honestly, she was feeling better on Saturday, and on Sunday, I was bedridden myself with some severe vomiting/fever a good bit of the day.

But the doctors actually have said, all things considered, we’d done a great job hydrating her at home. While there was protein in her urine and her bicarb was low (all signs of dehydration,) most of her electrolytes actually weren’t too horrible.

We were getting ready to go to the hospital and I walked into the hallway and saw this… she was so just done she just laid down in the middle of the floor!!

After a big bolus of IV fluids and a few hours of maintenance fluids, she’s looking MUCH better. She even started to sing to me a little while ago! I had a video of it… but she, um, stooled…. loudly…. at the end of it. I figured I would spare you that, but the singing WAS super cute!

Coming back to “inpatient” has been a very odd walk down memory lane. Our nurse today is one of my FAVORITE floor nurses ever, one we had many times in the past and who knows Annabelle well. Then two of my other fav nurse came by and shift change and were SUPER excited to see how big Annabelle is getting! The patient transport guy today asked if I worked here because I knew where to go and knew most of the nurses we passed. That, my friends, is a little sad!

And down in the ER, life-flight was making rounds and doing clinicals and the lady who came in and wanted to try to start Annabelle’s IV… we got to talking and SHE was the life-flight nurse/EMT who took care of Annabelle back in July 2011 when Annabelle had to be life-flighted (read intubated in ambulance and CPR and not good stuff.) and she remembered her! She said it was SO nice to see a child who they had helped to be doing so well (well, all things considering of course!) And honestly, it was super nice to see and thank the woman who played such an integral part in saving my child’s life on that very, very scary day.

With her formerly-hated sippycup

Anyway, the plan is to try and “feed” her normal formula tonight and see if she tolerates it. If she does, GREAT! We most likely go home tomorrow.

If not, well… then we have to stay until she can tolerate full feeds without stools that resemble, well, water.

We are REALLY praying it is the former option though!!! It is my kiddos spring break and I’m just super bummed that we aren’t able to make it “fun”… we didn’t have a lot planned but I had a few things we were going to do, and now it’s just… yeah. Not so fun, obviously.

A GOOD NOTE! Evidently Annabelle could tell that she needed water. Because she decided her sippy cup was her friend. My baby, who probably, cumulative through her whole life, had consumed maybe 4 ounces of water by mouth… drank over EIGHT ounces of water/pedialyte today!!! THAT is a miracle right there! Hoping that she keeps up the drinking trend even as she gets better!

Got some fluids in her… and testing out licking a cracker!!

THANK YOU to all who have been praying and for those who have offered help! You have NO idea how much we appreciate your thoughts and prayers and assistance. I keep telling myself it is NOT that big of a deal, it’s a silly GI bug that we should be able to easily handle compared to everything. But the reality is, it’s a big deal for Annabelle. She just doesn’t handle things like most kids do. And there are always worries of the “what if” it’s something more.

Not that the doctors are worried about it. Only crazy Mommy.

*sigh*

Anyway, thank you SO much for your prayers and support. It means the world to us.