Well, this is supposed to be true life, so here goes the post about our little epidemic. Friday night Bella Baby started vomiting and choking in her crib. Let me tell you that once you have kids and you have to go through something like this, you feel so helpless for you little one. You are scared because she doesn’t have the resources at this age (almost 5 months now!) to be able to know what is going on. When she was a newborn and was at the house in her first two weeks Bella Baby had started choking and couldn’t breathe because she was choking on her milk. The scariest thing in my life! I was terrified to let her lay down to go to sleep. All of that was revived Friday night. We didn’t know what was wrong and after we changed out the crib sheets and she seemed to be okay, we laid her down again-and then she started vomiting and choking again. This happened several times during the night (it started at about 11:30 in the evening and she stopped vomiting around 3:30 a.m.). Afraid to lay her down, I sat up on the couch holding her on her tummy, burp cloth under her little face on my chest and there we stayed for the remainder of the morning until it was time to get up. I checked her temp and it was normal, so I thought maybe she was having an adverse reaction to solid foods that I was giving to her. By 9 a.m. she seemed to be okay, so we all got up and got ready and headed out to Little E’s baptism. Little E is our friends baby that was born about 24 hours before Bella Baby..how cool is that?
Anyway, when we got back home, the diarrhea hit. I picked up my brochure from the doctor and the symptoms were the same as adverse food reaction. I called my mother and was feeling pretty down on myself. Remember I went against doctor orders and was feeding Baby Bella any of the Gerber 1st foods that I wanted and felt that she was okay. This adverse food reaction diagnoses that I had given to her was making me feel like a horrible mother. I had pushed her too much, tried to feed her things that her little body wasn’t ready for. As Baby Bella would look at me and smile, I felt horrible that I had caused her this pain and even though she was smiling, she was cranky and still having pooping problems. My heart just sank. Even though she still seemed to be doing better, we decided that I and Bella Baby would stay home for my husband’s cousin’s bday party. Since she was exploding through her diaper, we just didn’t feel like it would be a good idea and so my husband left and we stayed home. Now mind you, the worried new mommy was still taking temps with our Bella Baby, all of which came out normal.
Then Sunday-I got hit in the afternoon. I had been tired in the morning, but just took it to be that I hadn’t been sleeping well because I had been worried about Bella Baby. That is until I ran to the bathroom and started vomiting. Now I had the same symptoms as Baby Bella and I realized, it wasn’t an adverse food reaction-she had gotten sick-and now I was sick. Later in the evening, my husband got sick and so our little house fell apart and everyone except for the dog was miserable. Then yesterday we found out that this little stomach bug spread to a lot of people that my husband saw Saturday night. I immediately felt guilty and trying to figure out what happened.
My guess is that Thursday Bella Baby or myself picked up the bug at our first play date at My Gym. That was the only place that we had gone to that was different. I went and saw the twins after-and it is possible that the bug was planted then, but I don’t remember touching my friend or the twins-but I have no idea. My husband was for sure carrying “the bug” when he went to the party Saturday night. It lasted about 24 hours for us, but have still been monitoring Bella Baby closely because of her age and because of her lack of being able to verbalize anything.
So yesterday since we had all had it, I began the process of detoxing the house just in case we could get hit again for a round 2. It kills me because on Friday I had found a flea on the dog. I freaked out and scrubbed the house from top to bottom took the dog in for a flea bath and gave her drops after she got home. So I had JUST disinfected the house Friday, and now I am doing the whole thing all over again. Not that I mind a hospital cleaned house, but it is so much work and I still have body aches from being sick.
So here I am sitting thinking about the chaos that has occurred and what the final count is on victims with this whole thing and wondering what happened? If I had taken Bella Baby into the doctor-they probably would have scolded me for feeding her the foods I have and told me it was an adverse reaction. So I don’t think that there was any way that I could have known. I wonder if anyone from the Thursday play date at My Gym had just been sick or if they got sick this weekend like we did. Then it occurred to me-have all the kids that we met been vaccinated? I never asked if that was a requirement, but I wasn’t asked-so I am assuming it is not. Then I started thinking about the twins. They will get hit at the same time always, how does a mother make sure that her little ones are protected as much as they can be? You can do what you think is right in your house-but what about everyone else that your children come into contact with? The twins were a victim of this little bug as well. Imagine the double clean-up and double crankiness from not feeling well at the SAME TIME! I shudder at the thought. As I finally am able to have a cup of coffee this morning, I immediately thought about my stay in Okinawa Japan while I was in the USMC. I was amazed by the fact that out in public people wore the medicine masks if they were sick, had a cold, etc so that they tried to prevent things from spreading. Why don’t we do that here in the U.S.? Okay I know it totally is THE fashion statement, but if it could help someone else not breathe in your germs-isn’t that one of the coolest things that you could do? I think I have only seen someone do that like twice in the U.S. Imagine all the times you are at work and someone is sick, coughing and sneezing with a hand up saying-don’t get too close-I’m sick! I admit that I have never worn a medicine mask-but maybe I should. Shouldn’t play dates etc share if anything has been going around? Concern over health should be a primary topic shouldn’t it? I admit, I am lost on this one. I never really thought about it much when I would get sick, but now with child-it really makes you think.
Once we realized that Bella Baby wasn’t having an adverse reaction to foods, but was sick-we immediately notified the twins father. I was thinking of the children because of their immune systems and wasn’t thinking about the rest of the adults. Maybe our S.O.S. should have gone out to everyone that we had come into contact with. So now I am trying to figure out how long we need to have our house in “Operation Sterilize” and since I don’t know how long you carry before symptoms and I don’t know how long you carry after symptoms I am thinking for the rest of the week we need to be careful and cleaning-even though I clean house every day as is-needs to be upped to Red Alert status.
I have to admit, I am upset-feel guilty and just generally lost right now with this whole thing. I don’t know that looking back we would have done anything different, because Bella Baby being sick was just not something that we would have thought of unless she was running a fever and because she is newly on solid foods. So, here I am in my bleached smelling apartment on high alert and can’t stop thinking about what went wrong. I know that this will pass, but the concern of children passing to adults and children passing to children is something honestly I had not put a lot of thought into. I know I can’t put Bella Baby in a bubble-but wish I could right now. This is something I am really going to need to think about and perhaps re-think how we do some things…………
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