Weekend in Florida

Oh, Florida. 

A cheap fare to Orlando led us to take the opportunity to get the kids together with one set of their great grandparents.  The plan was simple - fly into Orlando, take a nice drive up to Daytona Beach, spend time with family, maybe play in the sand a little bit... sounds nice, right?

Well.... then Andrew came down with a stomach bug on the Thursday prior.  The vomit, the diarrhea, the fever, the whole nine yards.  He spent the day on the couch drifting in and out of sleep and watching movies.  Our plans to travel were officially on hold. 

But then... on Friday he seemed much better.  We were scheduled to fly midday on Saturday.  Due to our status, we have the ability to shift our flights by a day if availability exists, so we decided to see how he was feeling on Saturday morning and then decide to go, or to move the flight to Sunday and leave another day of observation. 

By Saturday morning (or even Friday night!) he seemed like his usual self.  By the time we got the the airport, he had been fever free for over 24 hours and vomit free for almost 48.  We opted to go ahead and go.

I will spare you the long drawn out story, but on our two flights (COS-ORD and ORD-MCO) and in the O'Hare Airport, we experienced two episodes of diaperless explosive diarrhea (one of those in the United Club in Chicago) and two episodes of projectile vomiting (one of those in the first class cabin).  There was nothing to do but press on, so that's what we did.

Newly minted Premier Gold baby

But... we got to the hotel and he seemed to be feeling better.  He had a good night's sleep, and in the morning he was himself again. 

So we packed him up in the car to head up to Daytona.  Not five minutes on the highway and he started to squirm and whimper, "Burp....!" at which point he yakked all over the car.  We turned right around.  At this point I was really sorry that we had dragged him across the country and doubting my mommy judgement that had said that he was perfectly fine.  I was also sad that it looked like we were going to miss visiting the great-grandparents.

Luckily, Daddy came to the rescue and volunteered to stay with the sick boy while he rested, and sent Clara and I up to see the great-grandparents after all.  It was a lovely visit, and a good time with just us girls.

Later that night, Andrew couldn't be prevented from eating a rather large BBQ dinner.  I was braced for the worst, but he miraculously kept it all in.  Interestingly, the explosive poop issue seemed to really have an effect on him and he had no potty accidents for the rest of the trip, in spite of dealing with some (ahem) issues.

Finally, a happy boy

Three words

Double ear infection.

:o(

My poor baby boy.  Bring on the amoxacillin!

norovirus

So here's our current fun - TMI about illness, but what an adventure: 

Went to Michigan this weekend to celebrate my dad's 60th birthday.  On Saturday afternoon, while visiting great-grandma at her care center, Andrew vomited twice, just right out of the blue.  I was so shocked at the volume coming out of his body.  My mom was like, "Maybe he had a gas bubble and just burped up."  And I'm like, no, dude, that's some serious vomit right there.  Following this was watery (!!) diarrhea, uncontainable by a diaper, and so every single diaper change was accompanied by a clothes change.  He was put on a diet of exclusively pedialyte that first day, and then a mix of formula/pedialyte thereafter.

Fast forward to Sunday afternoon, flying home to Colorado.  Travis needed to use the barf bag on the airplane.  I barely was able to get him from the plane (which came in to the absolute farthest gate possible, of course) to the curb.  We needed 3 bathroom breaks (with various uses of the toilet, if you know what I mean).  I made the executive decision to get a hotel room near the airport for the night, instead of attempting the drive to our house in the foothills (a solid hour away, and oh by the way, under 3 feet of snow from the weekend storm).  I got them to the hotel and checked in, got Andrew to sleep in the pack and play, got Travis set up in the bed with a bucket and a clear path to the toilet, then I took off to go get our car out of the parking lot (we had taken the hotel's shuttle for quickness/convenience), and go to the store for supplies.  

At Walmart, I started feeling lightheaded and nauseous, but figured it was because I hadn't eaten anything in quite sometime.  And you know, pregnant.  So I made the awesome mistake of stopping at Wendy's for a sandwich, although I did put some thought into what would be most benign if I was forced to see it a second time (so that was no to the chili, yes to the chicken sandwich).  As soon as I got back to the hotel, I laid down in the bed with severe stomach cramps, and within a half hour I had yakked the first time.

Sometime in the middle of that miserable night, I posted about it to facebook, and my mom said that both she and my dad had the same, along with my brother and sister-in-law.  Of the eight of us that were together that weekend, only my baby brother escaped.  Andrew had it Saturday, then starting about 30 hours later, it took down 6 adults within 6 hours of each other.

Yesterday was miserable.  Thankfully, Andrew seemed to be feeling better, and he mostly self-entertained all day long (what a trooper!) in addition to taking two significantly long naps.  Travis and I eventually had to get up the gumption to get up, pack up, and go home.  As we were driving home, the roads (including our road!!) were all clear and dry, and we thought, well, hey, maybe this won't be as bad as we thought.  Wishful thinking.  All 3 feet of snow were still on the driveway, barely compacted at all.  So we packed up the essentials and left the rest in the car.  Travis carried Andrew and I carried the laptops and the pedialyte (this tells you where the priorities lie), and we waded up to the house.  Let me put our driveway in perspective for you.  It is about 1/8 mile long (maybe just a bit longer) and gains about 125 ft of elevation.  It's a bit of a hike on a dry day.  Now imagine being up to your thighs in snow, lugging 20 lbs of baby and/or laptops.  While sick as a dog.  Oh, and pregnant.  Totally awesome.

I seriously considered calling for professional help yesterday.  We have no family in town (and even if we did, they were all sick too!).  We didn't want to call a friend who would understand the driveway situation because we didn't want them to get sick too.  I seriously considered calling the midwives and getting a doula or a nurse or someone like that to come over, but then they'd have to wade/hike/snowshoe up the driveway too!!  I felt really super duper alone.

We are all much better this morning.  We slept like rocks last night.  I just changed Andrew's first normal looking diapers (one wet, one dirty) in 2.5 days.  Travis has found the gumption to snowblow the driveway.  I have eaten some scrambled eggs.  My brother suspects norovirus - the kind of stomach virus that takes down entire cruise ships - and I think that's a pretty good guess.

Stay healthy, my friends.  And use hand sanitizer.

camping, colds, and sleep

Last weekend we did our second attempt at camping.  We drove up Geneva Creek, off of Guanella Pass Road.  It was a fun easy 4wd all the way up to just below the continental divide, topping out at about 12,000 ft.  We really really really wanted to camp up there in the "Geneva City" basin, but unfortunately, with the incredibly wet, snowy winter that the high country had this year, the mosquitoes were positively swarming, so we descended.

The lower part of the road was extremely busy with campers - even though this was dispersed camping - so we grabbed a wide spot in the road to camp.  Not our ideal situation, but it worked.  We took the three man tent this time, which was palatial in its accommodation.  We tried the suggestion of Terry and Tara, which was to swaddle him and have him sleep on the cushy changing pad.  This takes up a lot of room in the Jeep, but is a nice place for baby sleeping.

Dressed to combat mosquitoes and late afternoon sun.

Luxurious mattress

In the three-man tent

Chilly morning in camp.

Andrew didn't have the best night camping, but what we didn't realize at the time was that he was coming down with a cold.  He spent the following day pretty out of it, and we had a panicked night of constructing tents in the bedroom at home where he could sleep in the bouncy chair (semi-inclined) with the humidifier (which I wish we had a picture of).  This was followed by two nights of sleeping in the swing in the closed-up bathroom with the vaporizer running.  Then he graduated to sleeping in the crib with the mattress inclined by a pillow. This has worked surprisingly well.

I brought him back to my bed for a night, and neither of us had very good sleep.  So last night, I swaddled him up and put him down in the crib after reading Goodnight Moon, something I hope will become part of our bedtime routine:

He went down at 9pm and had three wakeups - 1:30am with a feeding, 3:30 am (just gave him the pacifier and rocked him back to sleep), and 4:45 am with a feeding.  I'm mostly confident we can get rid of that 3:30 break.  And then, though he was making noises from 6am on, he didn't get up until 7:15a.  So if you don't count the 3:30a wakeup, that's a 4.5 hour block followed by a 3-ish hour block and then a couple more hours before fully awake... I can handle this!  I got great sleep in spite of getting up to walk to the next room.

I think that for the time being, this means the end of co-sleeping for us.  We'll see what happens when I go back to work.  I've heard that the best sleeping arrangement is the one that gets everyone in the house the most sleep, and for one night at least, I think we all had a great night.

...I must be lonely

Woke up this morning at about 3:30am and just decided to give up on sleeping (and trying not to wake my husband) and came downstairs to lay on the couch.  I have this horrible head cold.  I woke up two mornings ago  (in Hawaii) not feeling great with this weird little cough.  Unfortunately, since then, I have had to fly a redeye and had a long day culminating in childbirth class.

I tried to give myself every opportunity to sleep last night: pile o' pillows, vaporizer with camphor medicine, vicks vapo-rub, but to little avail.  I guess I made it to 1:30 with little problems, so there you go.

Now I'm on the couch alone, waiting for the sun to come up, rocking a stuffed up nose, barking cough, which has resulted in a sore throat, and there's pressure in my ears.  Have to say that head cold +8.5 months pregnant is all kinds of extra miserable - all this and you are made to feel guilty about sleeping on your back/reclined!  There's no comfortable sleep position anyway.

Too bad tomorrow's a big day at work and I can't beg off (laws of physics say so).

So this is newborn training, right?