Wild Night!

-Hi, my 4 month old son is vomiting and has been for the last two hours. The last couple of times it has been bright yellow bile. Everything I found online told me to contact my Dr. immediately if his vomit was yellow, so I'm just checking in. I'm not too worried, I'm just calling to make sure nothing too drastic is wrong...yes, he's pale...no, he's not blue...he is lethargic...he is making eye contact...
-M'am, I suggest that you hang up with me and immediately call 9-1-1.
-Huh? 911? Are you serious?
-Yes, m'am.
-You mean, 911 as in the number I call and an ambulance comes to my house??? Really?
-Yes, m'am.
-As opposed to just taking him to the ER?
-You can do that, but you risk him going into shock on the way there or while in the waiting room.
-Um, I'm not sure that's really necessary. He's sick, but 911 seems really drastic. He's not THAT sick.
-That's my recommendation. So, are you going to call 911 or not?
-Um, I don't know. Thank you. Goodbye.

That was the conversation I had with the nurse answering service that you get when you call Dr. Bravo's office after hours. I hung up and called Brenda. Long story short, little guy picked up the flu bug that had been going around daycare last week and ended up dehydrated. Dehydration in a little baby is serious stuff and is a pretty big deal. It just didn't seem 911 material as far as my mommy gut was concerned. Brenda said that she couldn't really give me advice since she wasn't there...that it was really up to my judgment. She said that we could try getting fluids into him and see if that worked...but if not, we would have to take him in. If we took him in, they would hook him up to IVs for fluids and probably some kind of antibiotic, and likely keep him for at least 48 hours.

As I'm sure I don't have to tell you, this isn't really my cup of tea...but, I wouldn't ever put my baby at risk either. So, Andy and I agonized over what to do, and thought that we would at least TRY to see if he could keep some Pedialyte down. The first 1/2 ounce he puked up. As Andy got his shoes on to take us to the hospital, I tried one last time. He kept it down. 15 minutes later, we gave him another 1/2 ounce. Kept it down. We repeated this every 15 minutes for about 3 hours. Finally, we got in bed with baby in the middle and set our alarm for every 45 minutes to continue giving him fluid.

All is well and we have our happy go lucky little man back. He's a little out of it today, but for the most part, he's smiling and playing like nothing's wrong. I called Dr. Bravo's this morning to let them know about the answering service, and they were incredulous that I was told to call 911. They said that I did the right thing, and that if he does get worse to take him into the hospital. Otherwise, he should be on the mend. Apparently the answering service is "...north of New York...maybe even in Canada...that might be how they operate up there..." Okay! So maybe we should contract with a service that's a little more local??? Can you imagine how stressed out other poor moms would be sitting in the back of an ambulance with their baby?! And unnecessarily??? It was so hard to make a decision...the whole time I kept flopping back and forth between "stay home and see if we can fix this" and "holy cow, what if he goes into shock in the middle of the night...I'd never forgive myself". Craziness I tell you.

Being a mom is tough.