you’d think after spending 96 days experiencing all the ups and downs of the neonatal intensive care unit rollercoaster that we’d be a little less apt to freak out when something out of the ordinary happens. well, today something out of the ordinary did happen and we discovered that, in fact, the memories of the nicu can come rushing back, threatening to transform you into – as it was so aptly described by ann leary in An Innocent, a Broad – one of the “weak-willed people with the small brains [who] ran shrieking into the burning wreckage.”

this afternoon, kris came home from running some errands and asked how odin had been napping.

i exclaimed. “fine! i haven’t heard a peep out of him for hours,” as i simultaneously noticed that i had not actually turned on the baby monitor. not terribly alarmed, kris turned on the monitor and went about her daily duties. moments later odin awoke and we discovered that it appeared that he had thrown up a few times.

even though he seemed to be alright, i immediately went into OH-MY-GOD-WHAT-IF-HE-CHOKED-ON-HIS-VOMIT-WHILE-SLEEPING-AND-I-DIDN’T-HEAR-IT-BECAUSE-I-DIDN’T-TURN-ON-THE-MONITOR mode. then he threw up again right as he unloaded an unusually large montrosity that his diapers only barely managed to contain.

he threw up two more times during the diaper change which made it abundantly clear that something was amiss. and things were getting messy; so we gathered our wits and gave him a quick bath as we tried to make sense of what was happening.

wierdly, despite ejecting fluids from all available orifices, odin seemed quite happy to have the unexpected tub time with his rubber ducky.

after the tub, things went from bad to worse as odin vomited 8 times in an hour. and as time passed he went from a passive “spitting up” to a wretching that made it impossible deny that he was vomiting.

at this point, we both realized that we had absolutely no idea what to do. he’d had an egg a few hours prior to his nap and there was definately lots of egg coming up, so our leading theory was was he might be having problems digesting the it; perhaps even, he was having an allergic reaction?

as we debated the merits of calling the pediatrician, he started to get sleepy which was quite odd indeed, since he’d just had a two hour nap. i was brought to the brought to the edge of parental freakout as he started to nod off, only to choke himself awake as he tried to vomit on an empty stomach.

certainly, it was time to call the doctor.

perhaps not surprisingly, the pediatrician didn’t think it was very likely that odin was having a life threatening allergic reaction to an egg. no, he thought it was much more likely that he had a case of mild stomach flu and recommened that after odin had stopped vomiting for an hour to start giving him 15 CCs of electrolytes every 15 minutes. if he made it for four hours without an incident, then he could start nursing again. of course, i was relieved to know that i wouldn’t have to test my infant cpr skills.

after we started giving him small amounts of gerber liquilytes, odin quickly began acting as if nothing had happened, which is actually a little unsettling because i would think that the effects of stomach flu would last a longer than 3 or 4 hours.

as an interesting aside, it became clear to us that odin loved the liquilytes. i was suprised to see that both it and pedialyte contain sucralose. i’m not saying i think it’s provably unsafe, but it still seems wierd to put a n artifical sweetener untested on infants in a product that’s meant to be given to sick kids.