California - Day 6 - US Air Ways-to-keep-your-child-from-vomiting-on-the-plane

As I mentioned, the vomiting continued all throughout the night. It was just terrible. We finally crawled out of bed around 6:30am or so and started the re-bathing, showering, breakfast, packing phase. Never having dealt with this kind of illness before, I called the pediatrician. Of course it was a Saturday so i was on hold forever. I actually gave up at one point and contacted Chrissy for her advice. She told me exactly what the nurse/doctor later told me. In a nutshell, we weren't to feed Trent anything and if he became dehydrated we would have to take him to a medical facility. Here we are, only a few hours from boarding the plane, and not only do we have a sick child on our hands, but now we have to worry about possibly missing our flight because we may have to head to the ER if things don't turn around. Fortunately, the ER was never necessary.


UNfortunately, Lauren had to work the morning we left, so Trent and I didn't get to see her and say goodbye :-(


We left the apartment right about when we had hoped (8:30-ish), but we had to get gas and stop at the drug store to get Trent some medicine. We then proceeded to teh rental car facitilty and hopped on a shuttle. Have I mentioned how nice the San Diego Airport is? It really makes you hate the Philly airport. The staff were helpful and friendly, the lines were almost non-existant, the atmosphere is calm. There was no line at check-in. The lovely lady helping us check-in didn't charge us to check the pack-n-play - which saved us $20 or $25! We asked her how much of a wait we could expect at security - she looked to her right and said "oh there's no wait". Sure enough, we were through security in no time at all.

In the meantime, as per our instructions, we were giving Trent 1 ounce of medicated water every 15 minutes. This was torture for him. His belly was empty and all he wanted was to fill up his belly with fluids. He didn't understand that filling up would cause him to get sick, so taking the bottle away from him after he only drank one ounce was not easy. He'd scream everytime we took it away. I felt terrible. His only saving grace was that he napped often. While waiting at the gate, Kevin and I took turns walking Trent around, trying to distract him. He was still crying real tears and he hadn't thrown up since we were at the apartment so we felt safe enough to board the plane when the time came.


Of course, all we wanted was to get home. Easier said than done. There were issues with one of the breaks, then they needed a dozen volunteers to get off the plane and catch a different flight (for weight reasons). We ended up taking off 40 minutes later than scheduled.


We continued to give Trent 1 ounce of liquid, increasing his intake to 2 ounces, throughout the flight and in betweeen his naps. Over time his belly was starting to fill up, so taking the bottle away wasn't always as hard as it once was. The worst part was when the guy next to us decided to eat a salad. Trent just stared at him and cried.


Overall the flight went alright. Trent napped often and didn't get sick at all.


The flight landed in Philly right around it's scheduled time and the wait for our baggage to reach the belt wasn't very long. Right as Kevin was pulling off the last of our luggage, Trent threw up. How lucky were we that it didn't happen until we were off the plane?!?!


We finally made it home, where our dear sweet Maggie was waiting for us!


The virus hit me several hours later and it hit Kevin a few hours after that.

Trent's first sick day

Daycare called me at 11:30 yesterday asking me to come pick up Trent because he threw up. I guess its protocol: if a child vomits they must be picked up. No biggie. I'll use any excuse to leave work! Since I don't have much vacation time left for the year, I was happy to be able to charge my time off yesterday as "sick time".

I picked Trent up and he was off and on fussy the whole way home (which is only 6-7 minutes). He had thrown up his entire bottle at daycare, so when we got home he was pretty hungry. I nursed him until he was content then I observed him with caution as he played. He was rolling around on his belly (something that I imagine would aggravate the belly if he were sick) and acting totally normal. An hour or so later I fed him some broccoli then he took a nap. When he woke up I took his temperature - on the lower end of 'normal' - then we took Maggie for a walk around the block. No vomiting the rest of the day.

When Kevin got home I hoped on the Internet and found out vomiting often goes hand-in-hand with teething. And guess what. Trent is cutting his first upper tooth.

I'm no doctor but I am convinced Trent was/is not sick - he's simply teething.

He's been a fairly healthy baby since birth. A couple runny noses here and there but nothing pediatrician-worthy.