This last weekend was an exciting one. Owen experienced many firsts – his first trip the ER on Friday and his first trip to the Oregon Zoo on Saturday. Friday was my grandma’s 81st first birthday. My mom, Owen and I drove up to Puyallup to celebrate with the birthday girl. We got there and socialized with my grandma and great-aunt and great-uncle. My cousin, Charlotte, stopped by for a few minutes. Owen got to play with his 3rd cousins, Forrest and Lincoln. Forrest and Owen are 10 days apart so it was fun to see the two babies together. After all the socializing, we went out to a yummy lunch at Olive Garden. Owen had moments of fussiness at the restaurant, but he held it together pretty well for a baby who needed a nap. My mom offered to stop at Starbucks on our way out of town and this where the day went downhill. Since the drive thru was crazy busy my mom decided to go in and place our orders. I was sitting in the car with Owen who was sleeping and breathing a bit funny. All of the sudden the sound of a puking baby could be heard. I got out of the front seat and opened the car door in the back to see Owen covering himself in puke. It was bad. Very bad. Puddles… Anyway, I got Owen out of the car seat and started to clean things up as a best I could. Thank God for baby wipes. I had to clean the car seat and the area surrounding it, I had to wipe down his toys and then proceed to clean Owen with my mom’s help. My mom’s vehicle has a nice spot in the back so we laid Owen down and gave him a baby wipe bath and a fresh diaper and outfit. Mom questioned putting him back into clothes, but I thought this was an isolated incident (rookie mistake). We reloaded and took off for home until… the sound of baby puke could be heard again. We pulled off in a local church parking lot and started the process of cleaning up Owen again. And then Owen threw up twice more. This time it was all over my lap. Yep. Good times. At this point, we decided to wait out the bug and return my grandma’s house since we were only a few minutes away. Once we got to Grandma’s, Owen was asleep so we decided to turn around and head back for home. However, Owen’s breathing got weird and his color was super pale. He threw up a couple more times and we finally made the decision to take him to the nearest ER. As you can tell, there was a lot of driving and stopping and puking. I made many phone calls with Jeremy and our doctor’s office before finally making the decision to go to the ER. The 15 minute drive to the ER was one of the scariest in my life. Owen was so pale and I was scared if he closed his eyes that he wouldn’t wake up, so I kept him awake (more for my sanity than anything else). We arrived at the ER and Owen perked up. It was crazy. I’m fairly certain it was an answer to the prayers our family had been praying for us. It was a tough call but we decided to stay and have Owen seen by the doctor just to be on the safe side. This led to us spending over two hours in the ER waiting… for no real reason. We were seen by the triage nurses and told Owen was fine but if we wanted we could go back to the waiting room and continue to wait for a room to open up and a doctor to see us. Jeremy arrived after this conversation with the nurses and we decided it was time to go home. Owen was doing much better and had stopped throwing up. He had no fever and seemed to be his normal self again. We took our chances and signed him out of the hospital. At this point it was now 5:30pm (we originally started to leave for home at 1:00pm) and I was exhausted from the day. It was so challenging to me to make these decisions regarding Owen’s health all on my own. I’m so grateful that my mom was alongside me for this adventure. She really helped me keep it together. We were both so grateful when Owen perked up. He was a totally different baby by the time we took off for home.
After all the drama of Friday, you would assume we had a quiet day to lay low and just recover? Nope, wrong. It was Family Zoo Day for our church. Jeremy felt awkward about going to the Zoo without his family and I totally understand. As the leader of this event, he really couldn’t stay home. So we all went to the zoo on Saturday. Owen had no fever and hadn’t thrown up since the whole ER ordeal. We decided we would greet the families at the zoo and then leave whenever depending on how Owen was feeling. The whole day had me a little nervous, but it turned into a really great family day. Jeremy and I enjoyed taking Owen around the zoo. Owen clued into the animals and loved to watch them. The weather was off and on rainy so the zoo was kind of quiet. After the drama of Friday, it was just nice to be together as a family. I was so glad that Owen was feeling better and that we could have that time together. I wasn’t sure how the day would go down, but it turned into an family memory that I will never forget. We had a really good time. The contrast of the day before only made it sweeter. I really appreciated it!
Cousin Time
Family Zoo Day
Flowers from my hubby after all the drama
Feeling better and ready for the week ahead!
Amy Scott's Thoughts 