Our first ER visit. . .

Yup, you heard right! Last Wednesday, at the ripe old age of 8 months, we had the joy of experiencing our first visit to the Children's Hospital emergency room. What would cause such an endevour you may ask? What a great question!

All was well during the day. We got up as usual, ate as usual, went to the zoo with our triplet friends, ate again, and mommy and daddy were just getting ready to go to our weekly ballroom dancing lesson when Bri threw up. She only threw up once, and it was a lot, but she was still in a great mood. . .bouncing up and down. . .chanting Da-da, and smiling. Aunt Denise was to watch the girls while we were dancing and she came over and was still totally fine with watching the girls even though Brianna had just thrown up. She still seemed to be her normal self. And babies can randomly throw up for no reason, right?

Sure.

Once.

We didn't even get out of the driveway and Aunt Denise called us. Bri had thrown up again, and it was more than she had thrown up the first time, and now she just didn't look good.

We turned off the car and went back inside.

Bri looked pathetic. White as a ghost. And just lying there. In between throwing up anyway, which ended up happening about every 2 minutes. After about 10 minutes Brianna just slumped over and quit really responding to me. She couldn't hold up her head, and would only open her eyes in response to painful stimuli. I was scared.

I called my mom. She didn't know what to do.
What?! My MOM didn't know what to do?!
Nope, she had never had babies sick like that SO young. She told us to call the nurses line for our pediatrician's office. Already did that. Waiting for a call back.

We had the doctor from across the street come over and take a peek at Bri. He has a little one too and understood how stressed we were at this point. Her vitals were okay, but he was concerned about how lethargic she was. He suggested that we take her in to the ER be checked out.

Okay, we can do that. But guess what??? Now Olivia is throwing up too! We have TWO puking infants sitting on the living room floor. We are using anything we can find to catch it and/or sop it up (gross I know - be glad you didn't have to be there!) we went through at least 10 blankets and a roll of paper towels. Wow.

So we decide we should go in, and sooner rather than later. We hop in the car and hightail it to Childrens ER. They got us in within 5 minutes of being there. Awesome. They did all the vitals and stats and everything seemed okay - no fevers, no diarrhea, nothing to indicate an illness other than the near constant vomiting. UGH. The nurse kept a close eye on Bri who was cuddled into my chest. She didn't like how lethargic and non-responsive she was being. I didn't either. But I was SO glad we were in an ER where they could actually watch them and monitor them.

We were moved to an actual exam room and I immediately claimed the rocker in the corner and just sat and rocked Bri. There's something innate that makes me think that rocking will make things better. I just sat there and rocked and stared at her. I was so scared. She still wasn't responding to me unless I grabbed her or pinched her. Liv was on the other side of the room, still puking. Sigh. What is wrong with my babies I thought? What did I do?! Did they get into something? How could I have prevented this?

The doctor came in and talked to us. They decided to do some blood work on Bri. It came back okay, but they wanted to give them fluids while we were still there. Okay. Fine by me.

They came in a little later and gave the girls some Zofran. It was dissolvable, but Bri immediately threw hers back up. Poor peanut! We continued to rock, and Bri continued to lay slumped into my chest.

Then about 20 minutes later, out of nowhere, Bri opened her eyes and sat straight up. I thought maybe she was going to throw up again. But then she started babbling. That soon turned into "talking" to her sister. Then she started smiling. The nurses came back in and did an oral pedialyte fluid challenge with the girls. They had to be able to keep down the pedialyte for 30 minutes before they would allow us to leave. By this time the girls are lying on the hospital bed, 10:30 at night (2.5 hours PAST bedtime), talking and playing, having a grand old time. WHAT THE HECK?! It was as though nothing had ever happened. 3 hours of feeling awful,and scaring mommy to death, and the girls were 100% back to normal.

The ER doc came back in and talked to us. They were glad we brought them in and reassured us that that was the right thing to do. They are still very little and can dehydrate very quickly. She thought this throwing up episode was 1 of two things - either 1) a virus, in which case we should expect diarrhea and a fever at some point, or 2) something in the food I gave them. They had had each of the foods I had given them that day at least 4 times, so I had no explaination to what could have caused it if it was the food. I remembered that it was a new 4 pack of Yobaby blueberry yogurt though, so we suspect that it was the culprit. It probably was left out too long during stocking or something. As you can imagine, I promptly tossed the rest of it when I got home!

I am happy to report that we are healthy and back to normal, and have been now for several days. No one else ever got sick, so we are pretty darn sure it was the food. Our friend Jeff came over and professionally cleaned our carpets on Thursday afternoon - talk about a Godsend! Our livingroom floor smelled like souring blueberry yogurt - ICK!

Why do our kids scare us so?! Seriously! I am hoping for a much less eventful Wednesday tomorrow. Have you guys had your first ER trip already with your kiddos? Were you as scared as I was? Geez!

And I realize I am a touch behind in my blogging, and I have a couple of other things to blog about, but I wanted to post this so it was out there, even though I didn't have a chance to attach any pictures to it at this point. Hope you all are well!

Megan