Don’t read any further if you don’t want to hear about projectile vomiting and baby viruses!

Well, we did have plans. Cesar had both Wednesday and Thursday off, and we were going to do grocery shopping on Wednesday and then spend Thursday, Thanksgiving, cooking delicious food, watching movies and cuddling. Maybe Luna could even taste a new food. We were going to cook chicken pot pie for Cesar, vegetable pot pie for me, roasted carrots, potatoes, parsnips, brussel sprouts, mashed potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, pecan pie, key lime pie (our favourite).  It was our first Thanksgiving as a family of three, and with Luna being the only American among us, we wanted to start our own little traditions. Well, all was not REALLY lost – we did watch a lot of movies and we did all cuddle together for the most of 4 days. All day and all night.

That scene in The Exorcist comes to mind. You know, the infamous projectile vomiting scene? Just picture a 7 month old baby doing it. We have been blessed with the fact that Luna has not been sick at all for the first 8 months of her life. No unexplained fevers, no ear infections, vomiting (she barely spat up, ever). No, she decided to save all of that up and just get a really horrid virus that in itself was harmless, but at the same time pretty scary. A virus that lasted the most part of a week, and that week happened to be the week of Thanksgiving.

Tuesday morning I took Luna in to the pediatrician’s for a booster shot, but she already had a slight temperature so we decided to postpone it. She had some kind of viral upper respiratory infection so the doctor gave her some medicine for the fever which she proceeded to vomit right back up all over me and the floor. We tried again and she kept it down (little did I know that that was the first of many times I would be changing my clothes over the next few days). By Tuesday evening her temperature was over 101 and all she wanted to do was nurse, and nurse, and nurse, but couldn’t sleep. At around 11pm we FaceTimed Cesar at work, and 10 minutes later she started (literally) to projectile vomit. Her poor little face looked so surprised at what was happening, probably matching the look on my face. And that set the pace for the next 3 days… Fever, nursing, vomiting, crying, cuddling, no sleep, nursing, fever, Tylenol, vomiting, nursing and so on. By Thursday evening we had all slept about 3 hours in total since Monday night. I told Cesar that if we all didn’t get some proper sleep sometime soon we would all collapse… That didn’t happen (the collapsing that is), and Luna’s fever broke on Friday morning after a good few hours of sleep. Yay!! Finally over! I did the (huge amount of) laundry, Cesar went off to work in the evening and Luna had a good few naps. And then she barely slept again. We got up early on Saturday and Luna was in seemingly good spirits when all of a sudden she developed a red rash all over her body and started vomiting profusely and was acting very lethargically which is completely out of character. I had already called her doctor around noon when the rash appeared but by 2pm she hadn’t called back so we just went to the ER.

Luna’s sees her cardiologist at New York Hospital Queens so we went to the ER there (Flushing Hospital is actually a little closer, but not by much). The nurse actually rushed us through due to the rash but once she had been assessed it was determined it was most likely Roseola. We were sent to a room to wait for the (lovely) attending doctor who confirmed it was indeed Roseola (also known as Sixth Disease). It is apparently a common and highly contagious, but harmless infection that can happen in young children, usually before the age of 2. Basically it starts as a viral infection like a cold, with 3-5 days of sustained fever and the day after the fever breaks a full body rash develops. FULL, HEAD TO TOE, BRIGHT RED BODY RASH. That coupled with the vomiting was enough to warrant a hospital visit in my opinion, especially as her pediatrician hadn’t even called back yet.

The doctor was a little worried about dehydration and had me feed Luna 2 oz of Pedialyte along with a few short nursing sessions, and had us wait to make sure she kept it down and peed in a diaper. By this time Luna had totally perked up again. Cesar had had to leave us a while before that as no one could cover him at work and at this point I just wanted to go home and get Luna to bed, so the doctor released us. Luna ended up sleeping about 11 hours with a couple of very short dream feeds, and has napped most of today, so I finally feel like this is all going to be a distant memory very soon, and we will all be able to catch up on some sleep… Although I feel like I am coming down with something now, which would be just my luck!

Oh, and Luna’s pediatrician did call me back, six hours after I left the message with her receptionist, just to tell me that she thought it was Roseola. Pity she couldn’t have called me back between patients to tell me that… As much as I think she is a nice person, we need to change doctors. She is obviously overworked and it might have avoided the visit to the ER if she had just quickly called me earlier in the day. I’m not one to rush to the hospital with any random ailment, I’m actually not even one to rush to the doctor for myself, but when it concerns my daughter I tend to worry. I mean who wouldn’t? It was scary enough to learn about her CHD, but at least that is asymptomatic for now and won’t require surgery until she is a little older, but it’s something that is always in the back of my mind. But a sudden body rash is also scary, at least for first time parents who have never experienced this before! I’m so happy that I am still breastfeeding as nursing is obviously a comfort to Luna, and I don’t know if we would have been able to get her to drink anything else.

So, we shall be celebrating Thanksgiving a week later, with pot pies and roasted veggies and pecan pies and key lime pies, and hopefully no fevers or projectile vomiting or sleepless nights! And I am very, very thankful that this illness is over and hope that we won’t have to go through that again for a long, long time (never is probably too much to ask)!