Honestly, I have never really been challenged until the Norovirus hit the Bevan household!! Let me first start off by saying we are so blessed to have a generally healthy family!! We all get the occasional cold or virus but nothing like what we woke up to on that early Thursday morning!
Wednesday afternoon: RTB and I picked up CTB from our FABULOUS babysitter's house. She mentioned that he had not really been eating which is HIGHLY unlike him! I thought maybe he was teething or was just having an "off" day as toddlers sometimes have! We picked up our nephew J from daycare and CTB was SOO excited to have a buddy sit in the backseat with him! We met up with Auntie Tammy for dinner at O'Charley's. CTB was not really interested in anything... bread, fruit, chicken, not even ketchup!! Once he denied the ketchup I really knew something was not right. (Sidenote: CTB will dip ANYTHING in ketchup! It is a family curse from my side of the family and he was lucky enough to get the ketchup (well really any condiment) obsession too!) RTB kept worrying and worrying at dinner that something wasn't right. I brushed off RTB's worrying as this happens often and usually when nothing is really wrong. BAD MOMMY!! We got home after dinner and did the nightly routine... bed, brush teeth, read story, bed. CTB went down without a fuss as usual and I was not far behind him!
Thursday {early} morning: Around 1:45am I heard CTB in his crib whine and I am super sensitive to any noise that he makes. I immediately woke up but decided not to go in there because he had seemingly gone back to sleep. BAD MOMMY!! Again, around 2:15am, he did the same thing and I again ignored it as he went back to sleep. BAD MOMMY!! Finally, at 2:30am he did it again and I knew something wasn't right. I stumbled into his room in the pitch black dark and began to run my hands around the bottom of his crib fishing for the paci. What I didn't expect to get were handfuls of mush. At first, I didn't know what in the world it was and immediately went into panic mode. I flicked on the lights and ran back over to his crib and there my poor little man was covered in puke and the whole bottom of his crib was covered, I mean c-o-v-e-r-e-d in puke!! Thank goodness RTB wasn't working that night and I immediately began to scream for him. CTB was already upset and hearing mommy yell for daddy did not help the situation!! Poor RTB entered the room to mommy crying, baby crying, puke covered baby, puke covered mommy, and puke covered crib (I mean sheet, mattress protector, mattress, oozing in between the crib railings). We immediately went into "fix it mode". I began de-clothing CTB and gave him to RTB to throw in the bath tub. While CTB and RTB were in the bath tub I began tearing apart, CTB's crib in an effort to get rid of the mess! I decided that the crib sheet wasn't even worth trying to salvage and immediately threw it in a trash bag... the rest of his crib went straight into the washing machine and I brought up the Lysol wipes and spray. I began sanitizing as I heard RTB yell for me.... CTB was puking again! Poor little monkey!! We were able to contain it this time but CTB was absolutely pitiful and was not able to keep anything down. We looked at each other and decided we were going to have to go to the ER if CTB wasn't able to keep any liquids down as he hadn't really had much the day before either! Again, the puking began and we packed up ourselves and headed to the hospital. After about 4 hours in the ER, we were discharged with instructions that it may take 7-10 days for him to really come back around and to follow up with our pediatrician!
Thursday day/night: We got home from the hospital and thank goodness my mom had come over earlier to help out. She had switched the dirty clothes from the washer to dryer AND put CTB's crib back together and picked up a few things around the house! As soon as we got home CTB went straight to sleep in his clean crib. He slept for about an hour and then continued to feel lousy, laid around on RTB or I all day, and did not eat. We felt so bad for our little man but knew we were doing the best we could! I went to the grocery store later that afternoon and my stomach began to feel not right. I chalked it up to being around puke all day and being pregnant. HOLY MOLY!! Later that afternoon, I was keeled over in pain in our bathroom floor. I texted my mom and asked her to come over and help as now RTB was trying to handle CTB and me! She gave extra cuddles to CTB while RTB called back and forth with my doctor. Long story short, I ended up in the ER that night until early the next morning! Thank goodness for my mom!! She stayed overnight with CTB so RTB could be with me at the hospital!
Friday: I was still not feeling well so RTB took on CTB all day. He called out of work Friday night because I knew I wasn't going to be able to handle much more then myself at that point. THEN we got word that both Auntie Tammy and my mom had the SAME thing!!! I felt awful for sharing our very contagious germs and sickness with them!!
The rest of the weekend I continued to get better and better but CTB was still not eating. We were reassured that as long as he was drinking that he would eat when he felt like it. It took the full 10 days for him to be back to himself! We can officially say that we survived the Norovirus and I'll be happy to never see it AGAIN...ever!
