It's Finally Happened: Projectile Baby Vomit

I knew it would happen someday - - it was inevitable - - just a matter of time -- and the wait officially ended 4 hours ago... and I just spent the last two hours cleaning carpet.

BACKGROUND INFO: Our lil' sweet potato girl has been sick for a week now and the last 24 hours have been the very worst ever. She'd had a low grade fever off and on all weekend long, but we were told to let it work itself through, that her body was doing its job to fight an infection, yada, yada, yada. She was a little snotty, but nothing crazy. Not until late this past Sunday and early Monday morning, did she develop a cough (her first real cough ever), and by the end of the day, yesterday, she'd developed a little wheeze with semi-labored breathing, but she still had only a low grade fever of 100.4 degrees. Last night, one o'clock in the morning or so, she'd woken up and was crying for attention and we found her drenched with cold sweat, which means she'd had a high fever at some point unbeknownst to us and it had already broken. And this morning, she woke around six, initially had no fever at all, but within the hour, her breathing had worsened and the wheeze had become more 'snap-crackle-pop' like with a hittin' up there 103.3 fever tah boot. We had already made plans to take her to her pediatrician, but by this morning, we were fearful she had pneumonia.

I had stayed home with her on Monday and Tuesday, sick as well, myself (you should hear my weird scratchy voice right now - - luckily, I sound far worse than I feel). Her daddy had her this morning and took her to her peds office appointment, and later brought her and two new prescriptions to me while at work around noontime. While I tried to comb through some work email (I hadn't looked at my work email since last Friday and a few people were freaking out), I wore my sweet, sicky lil' baby girl in a sling, and she generally just laid on my chest for nearly two hours, happily babbling a bit, here and there, gumming a stress ball for a lil' while, occasionally patting at my face, and for the last hour, her wheezing resumed, she dozed off until we left around 2pm for the home and the drugstore.

Sooo, now we've got a nebulizer to administer Albuterol in order to help open up her lungs, plus an antibiotic we have to give her for the next 7 days while she fights some nondescript virus. She does NOT have pneumonia --thank goodness-- but we need to watch her closely.

Earlier today, after she'd woken up at 5pm from a late afternoon, two-hour long nap, she had a little coughing fit, gagged and she spit up some, but nothing spectacular, although she did totally nail my shirt. By 6pm, she had a 103.8 fever and was wheezing heavily again. We'd nursed when she'd woken from her nap, so with something in her tummy already, I'd given her some ibuprofen right away. Thereafter, she took her antibiotic okay, but our first go at the nebulizer was pitiful... When I'd removed the nebulizer box from the pediatrician's bag, I hadn't seen the child's mask that was also stashed inside the bag, so I had first tried the mouth piece that came included in the box along with the nebulizer. She was surprisingly amiable about the whole thing, too listless to fight me much, but I could tell the mouthpiece couldn't be right and I could also tell she wasn't getting much out of it.

Then I tried to give her something to eat - - emphasizing the word "tried." She really hasn't been eating much the last couple days, so although she drank a lot of water, most of the food I'd given her for her dinner, she had either mashed it and spread it around her highchair tray or flung it to the floor. We then headed upstairs for a warm bath, by which time, her fever had dropped to normal and her mood was rising up and up, although I still couldn't coax her to eat anything more. After she was all clean and lotioned like a greased piglet, all cozy in her jammies, we went back downstairs to grab her silky white blankie, and it was then I found the nebulizer mask.

So I did a more thorough read of the Albuterol prescription info and determined we could try at it again. She was such a good little trooper, sticking her tongue out to try to lick the inside of the mask, making little short 'ha' sounds and trying to watch Otis and Owen, only struggling near the very end, which was remarkable. Trying to hold a mask to any baby's nose and mouth for any length of time is a challenge, and it takes nearly 15 minutes for the whole nebulizer process to run its course from start to finish. Anyhow, once we were done with our first successful nebulizer treatment, she was definitely more like herself, animated and peppy and a bit sassy.
But then it went all wrong: I stood from the couch and she immediately began a HUGE coughing fit --can you see it coming? She gagged a couple times and then it happened: With my right forearm wrapped about her, I could feel her diaphragm and her tummy muscles clenching and she gagged so hard that she threw up and I mean she really threw up! Projectile baby vomit!!! Most of it just shot out and away from us both, getting nothing but a nice 5 x 6 foot area of carpeting where we stood. She began to sadly cry and continued to cough as I carried her into the kitchen and set her on the counter beside the sink so we could clean up her little mouth, but the gagging continued and her little body went rigid with muscle tension and she threw up again, this time all over me and all over herself and, of course, the counter. As I began the effort to calm her while stripping her down to her diapey at the same time, I could hear that the cats had decided to volunteer for the carpet clean-up crew <--- I will not spell out what exactly that means cuz it's GROSS! As I peeked over the counter bar to confirm my suspicions, my poor girl kept coughing and gagging and threw up again.

It was all over, and you know what I mean by "it." I had to bathe her all over again and she wouldn't nurse or drink anything before putting her down for bed, so she hasn't really had anything to eat since 2pm. Oh, and she threw up her antibiotic and wouldn't take it at all when I tried to give her a 1/2 dose. We'll see what tomorrow brings.