In Seach Of: A Go-To Baby Book

Warning: it's about to get gross up in here.

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We'd grown too cocky. My husband was always bragging about how well Baba G slept, and I marveled publicly (on this very site, just days ago) about how lucky we were that BG had never gotten sick.

After a brief bump in the road with BG's sleeping schedule (which I wrote about in June), he returned to sleeping through the night without a peep. As in, down at 8:30 p.m. and up at 6:30 a.m. (followed by an hour or so of cuddle time before breakfast). Beautiful.

Then a few weeks ago, that all changed. He started waking up screaming (and I do mean screaming) multiple times a night. Were his two additional top teeth coming in to blame? Was his nursery too cold... or too warm when the heat came on? Was he doing something to startle himself? Who knows. But when he woke up, he was not a happy camper.

The good ol' days

Needless to say, I was dreading this week because my husband was going to be traveling for work overnight on Monday and Wednesday, and then not home until after BG's bedtime on Tuesday. I've said that it's my husband who handles BG's bedtime routine, right? A bath at 7:30 (after which I change him into his sleeping outfit) followed by a bottle, and then it's into his crib about an hour later.

I'll have to write about why it's so hard for me to give BG a bath in another post, but suffice it to say that IT IS HARD for me to give him a bath. But I'd somehow managed to do that successfully on Monday night, thought everything was going OK after he went to sleep, and then was awoken by his fits at 10:30 pm., 11:30 p.m. and 5:45 a.m. I was running very low on fuel by the time Tuesday rolled around.

Things started seeming off with BG around noon that day. He threw up (as in, the real thing, not spit up) about 15 minutes after his bottle. However, his 4 p.m. feeding came and went without incident. That evening I'd managed once again to bathe him, had fed him his bottle (with a successful burping midway through), and was about to burp him again after he'd finished up the 8 ounces.

I faced him toward me to get ready to put him against my chest, and dammit if that entire bottle didn't come back up on me, Exorcist style. (Disclaimer: I'm too much of a scaredy-cat to have ever actually watched The Exorcist, but I have seen the infamous "puke scene" thanks to the wonder of animated .gifs.)

At first I honestly thought that BG was getting revenge for me continually muttering, "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope" an hour earlier while taking pictures and videos of him in his bathrobe.

 

But that wasn't it. He wasn't like "So there!" or anything after he threw up. In fact, he pretty much collapsed onto my chest... thereby getting the puke all over himself as well.

I had no choice but to bring him upstairs and clean both of us off—all the while wondering what exactly I should do. He didn't feel hot. But should I finally bust out the ol' rectal thermometer? Should I feed him again? Should I keep him up or attempt to put him back to sleep? Should I wait for my husband, who was stuck in traffic on Lake Shore Drive, to get home before doing anything else? Or should I call his pediatrician?

You know I chose the latter. While I waited for the doc on call to contact me, I pulled out Baby 411. Expecting 411 was the only book I read while pregnant, and I'd skimmed through parts of Baby 411 immediately before and after BG arrived. But the problem is that book is arranged in a weird Q&A format, which makes it kind of tough to quickly find information on a specific issue. When I searched for "vomiting" in the index, there were like 50 pages listed.

While my pediatrician's office called back within 10 minutes and instructed me to just put BG to sleep and reintroduce liquids slowly the next morning (along with an order to go buy some Pedialyte to have on hand for dehydration that could follow if he started having diarrhea, which they predicted he would), I realized it would've been nice to have an all-encompassing, easy-to-navigate baby book on hand. 

Anyone have one they'd recommend?

And no, I'm not going to "just search the internet" for this type of thing. I don't need to come across some wack-a-doo's site that will scare the crap out of me!

The good news is that last night Baba G only woke up once at 10:15 p.m. and then slept through to 6:30 a.m. And no more throwing up today. I think he's as tired as I am. The even better news is that his daddy's back today and will deal with any drama tonight!