The Wolfs: Sick Baby

We had a scare with little Sawyer earlier this week that ended with an overnight hospital stay at Blank Children's Hospital in Des Moines. On Tuesday, only two days after returning from our vacation in Table Rock, Sawyer started vomiting. He is on reflux medicine, so it isn't unusual for him to "spit up," even an entire bottle at times. This time was different because usually after he loses his bottle, he is happy and ready to eat again to replace what he lost, but on this day he kept dry heaving and vomiting more and got very sleepy, pale and had no interest in eating. He became so pale and listless that I called Cullen and told him to come home right away. Then I called the My Nurse hotline, who told me to call our pediatrician. When talking to the nurse at our pediatrician's office, she asked if I could get him to their office in 15 minutes. I told her yes, even though I wasn't sure we would be able to get there that fast. Cullen got in the door, and agreed with me that Sawyer looked terrible. My dad arrived at our house a few minutes later to watch Hayden for us, and we literally ran out the door. We were only 5 minutes late to our appointment, in Ankeny, which meant that Cullen was driving pretty fast!

At the doctor's office, the pediatrician examined him and decided to run some labs. Poor little Sawyer wasn't hydrated enough to bleed very quickly so they had to hold his little foot still for about 5 minutes to get enough blood to do the lab work-up. He was so out of it that he would cry a little and then fall back asleep. When the doctor came in to talk to us after the labs came back, I knew something was wrong. His lab showed that his platelet count was very low. Because of this, and the fact that we wouldn't be able to get him to keep any fluids down, he decided to send us to Blank for an overnight observation. I tried to keep it together, but I did break down a little at that point!

We called our parents to make plans for Hayden and Rocky and drove to the hospital. We took the longest way possible to Methodist because Cullen was on the phone while he was driving and we were both so shaken up that we didn't pay attention when he drove into Altoona, instead of Des Moines!

When we got to our hospital room, they examined Sawyer and asked us the same questions, for what seemed like the millionth time! Finally after being there for about an hour, they got his IV hooked up. Neither Cullen or I could watch them do this, but we could hear his cry from the other room. After about another hour, they had us give him some pedialyte. He kept the pedialyte down, and then a little later he started to act hungry so we gave him some formula. Amazingly, he kept everything down that we gave him in the hospital! We all had a pretty restless night, but in the morning when he woke up, I knew right away that he was feeling much better. We couldn't get him to smile at all the day before, but in the morning he cracked a smile at me as I was changing his diaper! What a relief! Everything in the hospital moves very slowly, so we didn't get discharged until about 2:00 in the afternoon. They finally decided that he had a stomach virus. Some of his labs at the hospital looked a little funny as well, but when they did them again, everything came back normal. We were very thankful, that even though we had to go to the hospital, everything turned out as good as it possibly could have. They believe that he was only mildly dehydrated and as soon as they got some fluids in him he started to turn around. It was scary, but it made me feel even more thankful and blessed that my children are healthy. Thank you to everyone for your prayers!

I didn't have my camera with me at the hospital so these were taken when we got home:

His sore arm where he had his IV