Stop me...

Ok. So stop me if you've heard this one. I walk into the ER with a very sick Amelia. Oh I have mentioned this before? Well this is like our life on repeat lately..... Friday night about 9:30 Amelia threw up all over the bathroom floor. Awesome. I was hoping it was just a freak incident so we got her ready for bed and she made it until 12:30 when I heard a little voice "mommy" yep it was clear by this point she had the flu. So into our bed she went. We stocked up with towels galore and tried to get some sleep when we could. About every hour or so she was sick. I called the Dr in the middle of the night to ask if we needed to do anything because she also wasn't having any wet diapers... and my experience from the ER previously told me this is something to monitor. She suggested that we do pedialyte or gatorade. Well we had neither and it was 2 in the morning so I headed to Kum N' Go and bought a stock in gatorade and life water.

Finally we got Amelia calmed back down and kind of asleep in our bed and I heard Grayson crying. I went in to find the poor baby covered in puke. I was praying he had just spit up but very quickly it was clear to me that this was much more than spit up. As soon as I picked him up he threw up all over me multiple times. Yep, Buddy had flu too. Sweet. Eric stayed in our bed with Amelia and I slept on the cough with Grayson. I called the Iowa Health Nurse because I felt guilty calling our on call Dr again. She assured me that he would be ok and just keep monitoring him.

Fast forward to the morning (which is actually about 2 hours from this point) Grayson seems as happy as can be, but Amelia is still a wreck. She did make it a few hours without throwing up, but when she started again I called our Dr back and she said we should go to the ER. So we headed down. Pretty standard procedure for Amelia at the ER. She hates it with a passion. She did ok until they had to draw blood. They even put this numbing cream on so it doesn't hurt and she still freaked out. We did manage to get that done and then they went to put in the IV. Of course they couldn't find her vein to do it. After three sticks another nurse came in. It took all three of us to hold her down and about 15 minutes but they did get it in. Amelia was screaming the entire time and thrashing and basically like a caged wild animal. I have never ever seen anything like it. When the nurses left I was trying to calm her down but she was still irate. She somehow manged to pull out the tape and needle with her TEETH and suddenly I was getting sprayed with saline from the IV and she was ripping off the rest of the IV tape.

Long story short we decided not to try again. They gave her some medicine to help her stop throwing up and sent us home with a prescription for more. We spent the rest of the day hanging out and trying to get her to drink pedialyte as much as possible. By last night she was feeling better- exhausted, but much better. She fell asleep on the couch at 7 and then slept until 7 this morning. Grayson has been good so far too so I'm hoping our little bout with the flu is over. If I never had to do that again it would be too soon.

We did get to catch up a little today. Eric and I both managed to take naps and I got groceries for the week ahead. We skipped church so as not to share whatever germs are left with anybody else. Both of the kids will be going to the Dr. tomorrow. Grayson for his 6 month check up and Amelia for a follow up from the ER. They did some tests to make sure it wasn't bacterial so we'll get those results tomorrow.

As much as going to the ER sucks, I am honestly always reminded of how really lucky we are to have generally healthy kids. Yea we've had a rough month and it seems that one or another has been sick for ages in truth we've just had a few bumps in the road and there are others who have far worse stories to share. I listened to a radioathon for St. Jude the other day on my way to work. It made me stop and thank God for everything we have been given. You just never know and I need to remind me self often that the flu and RSV are temporary and our kids will recover and get better. There are many parents out there who aren't as lucky as us. We really do have a lot to be thankful for.