What A Week

Where to begin? I’ll save the gory details and give the highlights, which most of the time felt more like lowlights.

The week began with what felt like Round 28 of Tate getting the stomach bug (it was really just the third time, but once is enough with this thing). We took him to get checked out on Monday because he seemed even more lethargic then the previous bouts he’s had. They sent us home after a dose of anti-nausea medicine and with the usual order of clear fluids, rest, and let the virus work itself out.

So Wade leaves town on Tuesday morning for a meeting in Philadelphia. He asks one more time if he should leave. I reassure him, “Don’t worry. We know how this goes. He’ll be fine by tomorrow.” Uh, wrong.

He proceeds to not be able to keep anything down on Tuesday. I start to get worried. I’ve never seen him so lethargic. It was horrible to see him try to crawl around and only be able to hold himself on his elbows or see him try to lie down to go night-night while IN the bathtub.

He wakes up Wednesday morning and proceeds to sip some water. When that immediately came back up, I knew this was getting serious. I had only been up about 45 minutes…no shower, still had on the shirt I had slept in, no make-up, glasses, you get the picture. I take him to the pediatric urgent care center thinking they might give him a quick IV, and we’ll be home in a couple of hours.

Tate continues to become drastically lethargic and is in and out of sleep. For the next three hours, he had a series of X-rays, blood drawn, and a catheter. Yep, a catheter. I have never heard, and hope I will never again hear, that scream that came out of him. It was absolutely horrible and made vaccines look like a walk in the park. It took me, my Mom, and two nurses to hold him down. Horrible. Then to make it worse, they couldn’t get anything out of the catheter. He was all dried up…poor guy.

Then the nurse gives me the lovely news that we need to proceed to the downtown children’s hospital immediately. I could take him there myself or they could hook him up to the IV now, and we could go by ambulance. Thanks, but I’ll take him myself.

After losing more than 10% of his body weight and an afternoon of more blood drawn and two attempts at an IV because his dehydrated veins wouldn’t cooperate, they decide to admit him.

So the quick trip that I thought would only take a couple of hours ended up taking over 48 hours…all while Wade is out of town. Thank goodness my Mom was there to help out because I’m really not sure how I could’ve done it by myself.

Wade got on the first flight home Thursday morning (thank goodness!) and was able to get the full hospital experience for another day.




The whole thing was so scary. Once we knew that the lab work came back negative and it was just dehydration from the rotavirus, I felt a little better. But seeing your child that miserable and in that much pain, while you can’t do anything about it, is absolutely heartbreaking.

I did get one of those forced special perspective moments out of the whole thing, though. My usual stellar sleeper could not calm down enough to sleep in the hospital baby crib Wednesday night. They brought in a full hospital bed so that I could hold him and sleep with him (after signing a waiver that I acknowledged that the AAP thinks I’m a horrible parent for bringing my child in the bed and risking his life…whatever!). Needless to say, Tate got a full night’s sleep, but I was up pretty much the whole time.

It’s not often that I’m forced to be that still and quiet for that long. In fact, it was pretty surreal as I remembered the last time I held my baby in a hospital bed. At only 7.8 pounds then, it was a little bit easier. But I soaked in every minute as I thanked God for giving this little guy to me and for knowing that he would be OK.

Walking the halls of a children’s hospital will provide a ton of perspective as you realize that it could be so much harder. Kids with cute little bald heads from chemo, parents that probably just heard some bad news crying in the waiting room, and floors with “ology” names that you hope you never have to go to. Lots of perspective.

But he was discharged this morning, and Tate got to be wheeled out in a super-cool wagon. I think he was quite ready to jump out of it and into the car if he had to.



Then we were home in time to all three have a WONDERFUL afternoon nap. Tate is already getting back to his normal self as you can see from the video in the car tonight. I think it’s Tateish for “I’m sure those people at the hospital were all very nice, but why in the world, did they have to put all of those things in me and poke and prod me every four hours?”



I hope I don’t ever have to go through something like that again, but I’m also extremely thankful that he is so much better already and we have our little boy home again.