Going For Distance!

I wish I could report to you that we came home from the pediatrician's office, and everything was fine.  Unfortunately, the circus continued, but "The Courageous Christopher" learned a new trick.  His eating continued to decline, and he started to do this thing called "projectile vomiting".  Now if you have never seen this before, all I can say is that it's a very scary and concerning sight to see.  Sure, all babies spit up, but this is not just any ordinary spitting up.  It really is hard to believe that such a tiny little infant could even manage this.  The name "projectile" is no accident and definitely describes what happens.  The baby vomits with such force that it literally shoots out of the babies mouth and across the room.  I had never seen anything quite like this.  Christopher was definitely "going for distance" every time he spit up! It is that scary looking, and believe me when I say that they do not make burp rags big enough or absorbent enough to handle this.  This required towels, beach  towels.  As you can imagine, it is not healthy for an infant to keep this up for long.

As luck would have it, my husband was out of town on a well deserved fishing trip.  For some reason my husband being out of town became a recurring theme whenever  a crisis would arise.  Anyway, I took the traveling circus over to my mom's house, so she could help me maintain calm.  It was a beautiful spring day, so we sat outside on her porch to enjoy the sunshine.  Christopher continued to "lose his lunch" (and breakfast) all day long.  I called the doctor several times, but kept getting the "just watch and wait" advice.  Finally, it got to the point where he was listless and not having any wet diapers.  Now I have no medical training, but I do know that newborns can dehydrate very easily.  I decided to take Christopher to the emergency room.

Welcome to crisis #1, only the first of many to come.  The emergency room doctor diagnosed him with Pyloric Stenosis.  If you are thinking what I was thinking, then you are asking yourself about now, what is that?  It sounds bad.  Well it is, and it isn't.  It is a condition that some babies are born with where the muscle between the stomach and small intestine is overgrown and causes a blockage, so the baby continually throws up, forcefully.  Sounded about right to me.  There was a small catch though.  Christopher needed a diagnostic test to formally determine that this was the correct diagnosis.  Unfortunately, we would need to go to a different hospital to have the test done.  I thought it was odd that on our way out the door, the emergency room doctor asked us if we had had dinner yet.  We said no, and he told us not to stop anywhere along the way and go straight to the hospital. 

Upon arriving at the hospital we went to the information desk, and then we were directed to take a set of elevators to the 9th floor.  Okay, I thought, this must be where they will do the test.  The elevator doors opened and a nurse was waiting for us.  He grabbed Christopher out of my arms, directed us to follow him to a hospital room (huh??? what are we doing here???), and told me that he was going to put in an IV.  He said the surgery would probably be early the next morning.  Needless to say, I was in shock!  Oh, I said, there must be some mistake.  I told him he must have the wrong patient.  We were only here for a test, and then we were going home.  So...put down that needle! 

I can still remember the pained look on the nurse's face.  Then he told me that there was no mistake.  The next morning Christopher would have his first surgery at the tender age of 2 and a half weeks.  Luckily, Christopher was blissfully unaware of what was going on, but I was an absolute wreck!  The phone call to my husband was no picnic.  He met us at the hospital, and we braced ourselves to face something that we never thought would happen to us, surgery on our newborn child.


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More tomorrow...