Scary Mother's Day

You probably don't know what it's like to see your 5 month old in the back of an ambulance. Unfortunately, I do. It's so surreal; you're temporarily numb and yet you know that when you're feelings come back you may die from the intense emotion.

First of all, Baby is fine! He is only fighting a virus. BUT, here's how he ended up in the back of the scary-box-on-wheels.

We brought him into Urgent Care to be seen by a physician because he suddenly began vomiting his food, crying in pain, violently coughing and he had a temp of 1o2. They did an x-ray on him since he cried in pain the entire hour we waited in the lobby. The Dr. said the x-ray was "abnormal" and that his liver looked enlarged. Since his lab-work showed elevated levels of something related to his liver, as well, they rushed him to a nearby children's hospital where they admitted him for further testing.

IN SHORT, baby's liver is FINE. He's just fighting a violent flu. But the poor thing underwent an unfair amount of torture--an IV, needle-pokings, x-ray contraption for infants (where they sit naked in a plastic tube with their hands above their head), an ultra-sound (just like they do for prego-ladies), a catheter (how else can you get a urine sample from infants other than open the diaper, blow cold air and then try to catch the flying stream of pee?), and lots and LOTS of Dr.s and nurses taking his "vitals" every time he FINALLY fell asleep in this new, scary environment. Oh yeah, and they wouldn't let him eat the entire time he was there (20 hours) just in case they needed to rush him off to surgery.

I will say that I am thankful for Kaiser's thoroughness to make sure there was nothing very wrong with my sick baby but I must say, Matt and I had a crash-course in what it means to be parents -- to see your heart walk around outside of your body (or in Brendan's case, try to crawl).

Earlier on Mother's Day Matt took Brendan and I to breakfast and brought our camera in hopes of documenting our first Mama's Day meal. But, as usual, I had taken the camera card out of the camera and didn't return it. Matt was good enough to pull out his phone-camera to document the tail-end of my first Mama's Day. So, these are the only photos I have of that wonderfully, scary day.

Rushing off in the gurney

The back of the ambulance

Waiting for test results in baby's hospital room.