Well, Livi decided that we didn't quite see ALL of Sydney while we've been here. We can now cross off the Sydney Children's Hospital, which never did make my list in the first place. My poor little bug caught a bug and off to the ER we went last night. And of course Jason is in China for work so it was just the two of us.
Here's how it all started:
Yesterday Olivia wasn't quite acting herself. I have been feeding her solids little by little and yesterday I gave her pears. She loved them! She ate a lot. Later that afternoon, Livi didn't drink much formula but I chucked it up to the fact that she must be full from the pears. Late in the afternoon, I decided to go for a run with my new City Jogger stroller (we got a new one since Delta damaged our Maxi Cosi). While running, Olivia was whining so I pulled to the side and just as I bent down to see what was wrong, my poor baby threw up EVERYWHERE. I didn't even attempt to clean it because it was all over her, the stroller, her stroller seat pad and her toy. I did what any wonderful mother would do and I covered it all with a blanket so no one would notice and hightailed it back to the hotel.
By the time we got back I figured she was feeling better because she fell asleep on the way home. Once we got to our room, I stripped and bathed Olivia and let her play. Then I cleaned the stroller and toy and threw her seat pad in the wash. After I was done cleaning everything up, I went to feed Olivia her afternoon bottle. Poor thing immediately puked what little formula she did take down. At this point I still figured she was full from earlier today and thought that maybe she was bounced around while I was running and it upset her tummy. That lead to bath number 2 for my sweet girl. After bathing her, I took a shower. I started to play with Olivia and an hour later I decided to try a bottle again. You guessed it… puke everywhere and bath number 3 for my baby. Now I really started to become concerned. I know babies can dehydrate easily and at this point it had been several hours since she kept anything down. I waited a couple more hours and decided to try once more. She drank maybe 2 ounces and then threw it up EVERYWHERE, which lead to bath number 4 for Livi and shower number 2 for me (and a whole lot of laundry and cleaning). After a minor freakout (sorry Jason!), I went to the reception desk and asked about an after hours doctor. I called the number and was referred to an advice line. When I told the nurse what had happened and about the lack of wet diapers the whole day, she told me to go to the ER- so off we went.
We arrived at the ER at 10:30pm and it was packed. The nurse told me that it could be a couple of hours. There were 10 people ahead of me. Had I known that it would actually take 6 hours (just in the waiting room!), I probably would have just gone home. While waiting, I did manage to feed Olivia 4 ounces over a 3 hr period (which is better than nothing). When we finally got taken back, they basically told me that she wasn't dehydrated yet and that they thought it was the flu but that they wanted to take a urine sample to be sure it wasn't a urinary tract infection. We were given a room and I was told I had to catch Olivia's pee in a cup. Mind you, it was now 4:30am, this poor kid hardly drank anything since early afternoon and didn't have any wet diapers since then. I was thinking "fat chance" but held my tongue. I started to feed Olivia while waiting for her to pee. After about 45 minutes, I finally caught some. I was so proud! The doctor (who by the way looked like Doogie Howser) came back and said that the urinalysis came back with white blood cells and that they wanted to get another sample using a catheter to make sure the urine wasn't contaminated by skin cells or anything, which they say happens frequently with little girls. Why they didn't just do that from the beginning, I'm not sure. It would have saved over an hour but oh well. Anyhow, the second urinalysis came back negative and after all that waiting, they told us that we needed to come back at 2pm for a regular doctor appointment. We left at 6:30am. Ridiculous!!
We got home at 7am and I put my PJs on and we both slept until 12pm, thank goodness. We went to the doctor at 2pm and she told us that Livi did in fact have the flu but that it was probably just the 24 hour bug. By that time, it had already been 24 hours and Olivia was on the mend and had already held down a couple of bottles. So basically we went to the ER for 8 hours for nothing and then to the doctor for 1 hour just for them to tell us she should start feeling better.
Needless to say, it was quite an exhausting adventure. And one expensive hospital bracelet for her memory book. ;) I'm not exactly sure why I am not sleeping right now. The good news out of all of this is that Olivia is starting to feel better and still went to sleep in her crib tonight without hardly crying at all. I just hope my sweet baby is back to her usual self tomorrow.
And now I'm off to bed. G'night. xx
