We're home

After Cooper received another dose IV antibiotics (around 8:30 pm), he was released to go home. As we packed up all of our stuff, Cooper vomited - a lot - twice. The doctor was paged. Doc said she felt Cooper's reflux history/dx made him more likely to vomit. We disagree - he very rarely vomits. In fact, until he had the aspiration pneumonia he very rarely spitup.

Pooper fell asleep in the car on the way home and was still asleep when we arrived (9:45 pm) so we kept him in his car seat and he slept for 2.5 hours.

When he awoke he was hungry - he had vomited so much earlier that I assumed he was starving but I was concerned he might not keep anything down. I fed him but he only took 1 ounce.He has been very frequently but very small amounts since he is feeling crummy so that's ok. Well, about 30 min later while upstairs getting ready for bed he cried for more so I started to feed him again and he turned it away and then vomited a HUGE amount - soaked the entire front of my shirt and himself too.

We called the doctor (pediatrician) and the on-call doc called back right away. He seems to think that Cooper may have a stomach bug that's going around and nota reaction to the antibiotic. He said if it was a reaction it would have happened last night after the first dose. Also said that there's a nasty bug going around which he could have been exposed to prior to being hospitalized, or while we were there.

We were instructed to give him a teaspoon or two of pedialyte every 15 minutes to keep him hydrated since he can't keep the formula down. Once he's shown to keep th pedialyte down for a few hours we could reintroduce a tiny bit of formula. If he can't hold down the formula by noon Sunday we were advised to call the doctor back.

Cooper liked the pedialyte which has no flavor - clear and plain like water. He kept it down too. So at 5 am we gave him a little formula (half ounce) and a half ounce of pedialyte every 30 min after that and he kept it all down. Since then he's taken 2 oz of formula per feeding, twice, and he's kept it down. We're relieved.

We have to wear masks when we're holding him to prevent ping-ponging the virus(es) back and forth. Thankfully the masks don't scare Cooper. In fact, he laughs when we talk with them on.

He's exhausted (I know the feeling) and sleeps between feedings (wish I could relate to that LOL).

We have to keep him home this week as long as he is symptomatic. Right now his nose is still running, he has a mild cough, his voice is hoarse, throat and ears red, and has major diarrhea (which on-call doc thinks is the stomach bug and not side effect of antibiotoic - but we disagree withthat since he gets severe diarrhea when on antibiotics - we went through this a month ago with the pneumonia).

I'm hoping he's much better by Wednesday so he can return to daycare so I can focus on work since we don't have anyone that can watch him for me at home and Bob leaves Monday morning for work.

One of the nurses at the hospital gave us her # (the one withe the bosom that helped Bob calm Cooper down) for babysitting opportunities so I may call her tonight to see if she can help out for a few hours any days this week while Cooper has to be home. Fingers crossed on that.

I'm going to call around to neighbors and friends to see if anyone knows someone that could do long-term in-home childcare for us. This could take a while to get a new solution in place so in the interim Cooper will return to daycare when he's feeling better (though the thought of additional bugs caught there makes me cringe). We'll work it all out though.

Ah the adventures! :o