It wasn’t overeating!

We should have known. Ethan hardly ever overeats. And that first incident of vomiting turned out to be the beginning of a nightmare for all of us.

Chronology of Events

Thursday
8:30p.m. vomited, with slight diarrhoea. Vomitus contained the rice he had taken for dinner.
Breastfed him and gave him a little bit of water. He fell asleep soon after.

Friday
2:30a.m. Woke up and vomited on our bed and on me. There were a few grains of rice, more milk and water in the vomitus.
Cleaned ourselves and our bed up, fed him breastmilk and he slept.

7:00a.m. Woke up, coughed a little and then vomited again. On the bed and on the floor.
Cleaned him up and discovered he had diarrhoea too.
Fed him water, breastmilk and a few grains of Rice Krispies.

8:30a.m. Diarrhoea again.
He drank some Yakult.

9:00a.m. Vomitted all the Yakult out. We all rushed to the hospital after that.

Thankfully we didn’t have to wait too long for the doctor that day, and Ethan was quite happy playing with the toys in Dr Jessica’s office. Doctor diagnosed Ethan as suffering from acute gastroenteritis, caused by a virus, possibly the Rotavirus. She said it was not food poisoning, because he did not have a fever. His persistent vomiting and diarrhoea had also resulted in a weight loss of about 1kg!!! He was only 9.9 kilos when he was weighed in. I was very worried about Ethan’s inability to keep food in though, and he was given a dramamine shot to help prevent that. After the shot was administered, we waited in the pediatric ward area for 30 minutes before giving him the oral rehydration salts (ORS) mixture (Dramamine takes 30 minutes to take effect). Well, of course he didn’t want the ORS mixture, and would only take breast milk. Doctor told me to give him only the fore milk for now, so I took him to the nursing room and breastfed him there. After that, we waited for a while for the rice water to be ready. We had ordered some from the hospital and it was one of the fluids that was recommended for Ethan. He didn’t really like it though, took a few sips of it and pushed it away.

Pete and I decided to tarpow Mc-D’s for lunch on the way back, and our boy fell asleep in the car too. But he suddenly woke up when we reached the Mc-D’s in Greenlane, fussed and cried and then threw up again! Luckily I had asked the nurse at the hospital for a plastic bag just in case he vomited. I called Dr Jessica when we reached home, and she said that we would need to bring Ethan in for an intravenous drip if his vomiting still persisted. We certainly didn’t want that! I told the doc we think he vomited because he was lying down instead of standing vertically up, so she said to give it a few hours first.

Poor boy… we took him back and let him rest for a bit. He didn’t really want to drink anything (we were to try offering him fluids like rice water, ORS, 100-Plus or fore breastmilk, but he would only take water and breastmilk), and we could tell that it was the phobia of throwing up whatever he took in. Then he suddenly decided that he wanted Yakult, so I gave him some, and then later on, he suckled himself to sleep again.

Unfortunately as he was sleeping in my arms, he woke up crying and threw up again. This time, I already had a container ready just in case. I tried to rinse Ethan’s mouth with water to get rid of the vomit smell, but he would not let me. I was very worried about Ethan’s condition then, I didn’t want to see him suffer like that, but still I really could not stand the thought of him on the IV drip. It was already 3:30p.m. at that time, and Pete said we ought to give Ethan another chance. And I am thankful we did.

He began to get better and better after that. He fell asleep in my arms at about 5p.m. and I was careful to prop his body up at an angle so that he felt better. I was literally counting the minutes to the 4-hour time frame that he did not vomit. At about 7:30p.m. it marked the 4-hour vomit-free duration, so I tried giving him some Rice Krispies which he gingerly ate. We were still wary about the fact that he could throw up any time but we were glad that he was improving.

He was still having diarrhoea though but we pray that he will recover from that soon.