A mom's daily struggle with work, play, and a crazy toddler.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Chunks

One of the greatest occurrences of my life thus far happened the other day. Spoiler alert: that was sarcasm. Harrison projectile vomited, numerous times, all over me and this house.

Moms don't have an easy job as it is. Infantile babies may spit up all over you for their first 6 months of life, breastfeeding is no walk in the park, exhaustion is an understatement until your child begins sleeping through the night... which may take him or her 9 months.. ahem.., wiping shit from their asses that smells like the most ungodly scent you can imagine; none of it is fun. However, it kind of just all comes with the title, and you get over it quickly. Hell, I can change a poopy diaper like nobody's business now.
Is it fun when I make you clean up all of the tupperware?

The issue of projectile vomiting is a different playing field, though. Harrison and I were just sitting peacefully on the couch, watching the Today Show, as I drank my coffee and him his juice. He sneezed. I quickly grabbed a tissue to wipe up the snot that was all over his face and as the tissue was in front of his face, the chunks came flying. Some of you may think I was lucky to have somehow had a tissue right over his mouth at the very moment when he puked, but those of you are wrong. I feel like everyone has certain textures that just freak them out, and mine is wet paper. So there I was, holding a dripping wet tissue, which is enough to make me vom myself, then add to that the contents of vomit all over Harrison, me, and the couch.

My fight-or-flight response kicked in, and without taking a moment to consider how gross this all was, I scooped him up and ran upstairs to get him changed. Then came the fun part of having to clean up the puke from the couch, when I became fully aware of the fact that moms do not have it easy.

I wrote that one off as maybe Harrison drank his juice too fast, and his stomach rejected it. Or something went down the wrong pipe. He was acting fine, playing, cuddling, whatever... so I went on my merry way.
No, it's this vile food you feed me

Maybe an hour later, I went into the kitchen to grab a bowl of cereal. Harrison came running in after me, as he does whenever I go into a different room, and as my back was turned to him, I heard a loud splash. There he goes again. This time all over the kitchen tile (which I must say, made for much easier clean-up), and himself, again. He started to take a few steps towards me, when another batch came up, and it must have startled the shit out of him, because he came running at me, straight through the wet vomit, throwing his vomit-covered self at me like a bear was chasing him, and screaming crying, because why wouldn't he be? It was a horrible situation.

At this point I knew I needed to call the doctor's office, and a nurse told me just to watch him and not to give him any dairy. That was all fine and dandy, except that I had no idea what caused these three freak events, and I had no way to prevent it from happening again, other than to avoid dairy and feed him only crackers for the remainder of the day. So, I lived in the worst fear of my life for the rest of the morning- that any little cough, or fall, would induce projectile chunks again.

LUCKILY it was only those three times. I've heard horror stories from moms that their babies projectile vomited for a full day, or longer. That is literally the worst possible thing I could imagine. Moms that survive that are heroes, in my book.

This was two days ago, and he hasn't been acting sick since.
As insane as ever!!

Well, maybe except for last night, when he was up 4 different times, crying his little heart out, and that NEVER happens anymore. We think he might be getting a molar in. Since he doesn't have any words to express himself, like for example to tell me if he's hurting, where it hurts, etc etc... I have no way of knowing if my theory is right. This, Harrison, is why you need to learn to talk. Please, I beg of you.

What is the grossest thing that's happened to you lately?


4 comments:

  1. I have already experienced being covered in projectile chunky vomit and it wasn't even my child or at least a blood relative. On the bright side my body took all of it so none got on the couch. It wasn't my couch either, so that didn't really help me, but still. How have I never known you hated wet tissues???

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  2. I'm really, really sorry but I have to admit I laughed at this. We decided to do Valentine's Day late so on the day itself I was quite excited to get to bed early at 7 pm only to be awoken at 11 by that same sickening splash you just described. Tortellini, not fun. Good news is- you get used to it (we've had too many rounds of this from daycare). Bad news - eventually you will probably get it too and puke out of your nose like I did.

    Side note: I'm impressed Harrison made it this long

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  3. Reading this made me gag a little. I hope Harrison is feeling better now, but yikes! I probably would have reacted the exact same way as you.

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  4. Poor little guy! I'm glad he's feeling better. The smell of vomit does to me what wet tissues does to you, so it's probably a good thing you were in that situation rather than me!

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