DaKoda's hospital stay

*** This post is long and may bore you. It also gets a little graphic. If you don't feel like reading it, you don't have to. I wrote this more as a journal for myself to remember what happened.***
Last Saturday DaKoda threw up 3 times, but it wasn't a lot and I thought maybe something had just upset her tummy. Most of Sunday she seemed okay, but not really herself. Monday she had pretty bad diarrhea (sorry this may be too graphic, so if you want to quit reading I understand)and threw up 2 times that day. Tuesday the diarrhea had gotten worse and she refused to eat. I finally decided it was time to call the doctor. So we went in at 11:00 am. Dr. Miller showed me her throat and it was really red and raw. He said she had a cold and a stomach virus. He told me to try to get any liquids in her, lay off of solids for at least the rest of the day, and to call him if she had less than 4 wet diapers in any 24 hour period. The rest of Tuesday she didn't have much of anything to eat or drink. She wouldn't drink her formula, water (which she usually loves), juice, pedialyte, but we finally got her to drink some water with a Crystal Lite mix-in in it. It was a sugar free Grape flavor. But she did about half her bottle of formula to go to bed that night. Wednesday she refused to have anything. She will usually beg for a bite of my toast in the morning for breakfast and she kept shaking her head when I offered it to her. She had extreme diarrhea at this point and I had to bath her 2 extra times that morning because of it. Then by about 2 in the afternoon she still hadn't drank anything at all and had only had one actually wet diaper. So I called the doctor and he told me to try the Crystal Lite again. She shook her head and screamed at me. DaKoda was so tired she fell asleep in my lap without drinking anything. Brooke was being so good that day, but I couldn't put DaKoda down to get Brooke to take a nap. Brooke has gone about 3 times without a nap, but she usually gets pretty mean in the evening if she hasn't had one. So around 3 pm, Brooke came and wanted to sit with me and DaKoda in my lap (DaKoda was still sleeping). I looked down and Brooke had stopped eating the sucker she'd had for a treat. I asked her if I could take it so she could close her eyes and she said yes! After about 10 minutes she was sound asleep. Brooke never falls asleep in my lap anymore. I was panicked that Brooke was starting to get sick too. (As of today, she still hasn't.) DaKoda woke up about 3:45, so I was able to carry Brooke into bed. I called back to the doctor at 4 and he asked me to bring DaKoda back in. Her appointment was at 5:30 pm, so I waited for Derek to get home so he could stay with Brooke while I took DaKoda. When the doctor looked at her and saw how much weight she had lost (she went from 18 pounds 14 ounces to 18 pounds 3 ounces) he told me we needed to get her in the hospital and get her hooked up to an IV. She was pretty dehydrated. Derek called his mom and asked her to take Brooke overnight so she wouldn't have to stay at the hospital. (It was hard enough to contain Brooke at the hospital when we were there for her having RSV.) I went home and packed up some stuff and had Derek drop DaKoda and I off at the hospital before he went to drop off Brooke.
I had a really hard time that night. DaKoda was so dehydrated that they could not find her veins. They pricked her 7 times! before finally finding a vein. It took them almost an hour and a half. At one point they were talking about doing the IV in her head. I was pretty upset by that point. It was so hard to have to pin her down to the bed with her screaming bloody murder (the worst screaming I have ever heard from her) and kicking her little heart out. The nurse had first tried twice and couldn't do it, so she was going to call down to the ER and have them come do it. While she was gone, DaKoda fell asleep. I felt so bad waking her up to try again. My sister JoLyn had asked her co-worker to come and give DaKoda a blessing and they came in somewhere between the 5 and 6 attempt. So they decided to take a break again while she was given the blessing and then they would be back. DaKoda shrieked all through the blessing. She freaked out as soon as they touched her head. I don't really know what he said during the blessing, but even though DaKoda was still screaming, I did feel a lot calmer and felt like things would get better. Then the doctors came back in and pricked her for the 7th time and it finally worked! Thank heavens! Shortly after, Derek showed up and I rocked DaKoda to sleep. JoLyn and Derek both left to go home and left me to do my best at consoling DaKoda.

Here is the crib they had for DaKoda to sleep in. It was really high up and the you had to raise the sides, which kept getting stuck and would often wake DaKoda up. At 3 am DaKoda woke up and was pretty upset. I was trying to just pat her tummy through the crib to get her back to sleep when I realized her tummy was hard as a rock. I yanked the side of the crib down, picked her up and immediately called the nurse. DaKoda threw up a little on her gown before the nurse came in. The nurse checked her and then said she was going to call another nurse because she wasn't sure what to do. I started crying and called Derek at home. He calmed me down and said to call when we found anything out. DaKoda then exploded with diarrhea. I changed her diaper and as I was finished, she peed on the clean diaper. Almost immediately, her tummy felt a lot softer. I told the nurse and she felt okay about it too. (By this point, with all the fluids going in her, I was surprised she hadn't had a good bowel movement. She had drank 12 ounces of Apple Juice before bed as well.) I called Derek, but he didn't answer his phone. It had only been like 20 minutes since I talked to him. So I called again and he answer out of breath. I asked him what was going on and he told me that he had dumped an entire bottle of water on himself and in his ear thinking it was his phone!! It was hard not to laugh at him. That sure cheered me up thought when I needed it. Thanks sweetie for pouring water in your ear to make me smile. I got DaKoda to fall back to sleep and moved her to the crib where she instantly woke up. I went to pick her back up when I realized her diaper was soaking wet. The most wet diaper she had had in almost 48 hours. After changing her, DaKoda fell right to sleep. She slept until 6:45 am when her IV started beeping. I called the nurse and told her it was beeping. After 10 minutes of hearing the beep, I called the nurse again. I was getting a little upset. I felt like how do you expect these kids to get any better, when you won't allow them any sleep! Needless to say, there was no way at that point that DaKoda was going back to sleep. I had a hard time that breakfast didn't show up until 8:40 am. I usually can't wait that long for breakfast. Breakfast was okay. It was an egg casserole thing, which I really don't like eggs very well. It tasted okay, but I think it sat for a while because it was a little dry. The hash browns were cooked way too long on the top, and raw on the bottom. So I sort of picked at both the eggs and hash browns. I had pears too, which I tired to give a bite to DaKoda, but she didn't want it. I gave her some of the Cheerios's too, but she just fed them to me. They brought her in some baby food and I tried giving her some banana's but she refused them too.
The doctor came in while I was eating my breakfast. It was the other doctor in their office, Dr. Peterson. He said as long as she doesn't do horribly bad or things turn for the worse, that we could go home around 5:30 or 6 pm. He told me that if we get anxious to go home around 3:30 or 4 pm, that we could. He felt that as long as she had almost 24 hours of fluids, that she would be okay for at least a while. He said to bring her back in if I notice anything and says that he knows I will because I am a really good mom. Such a nice thing to hear when you feel so bad for your kid being in the hospital.
DaKoda loved playing with this nob thing on the crib. She even tried to eat it! It did keep her entertained for quite a while though.
At lunch, (which was great by the way. It was chicken strips with honey mustard dipping sauce and spaghetti noodles with some sort of sauce on them. I also got sliced strawberries, blueberry cheesecake, Popsicles and strawberry jello. They make sure you don't starve! They serve meals to one parent the entire time you have a kid in pediatrics. That way you never have to leave the child.) DaKoda kept climbing up my legs and begging for food like she usually does. I tired to give her different things, like the strawberries, a little cheesecake and a little noodle. She wasn't eating any of it. So I finally tired the jello and she would eat it as long as I gave her small bites. That's why her tongue is bright red in the next picture.

DaKoda kept pulling up her gown and playing peek a boo with me. She was such a crack up! She kept trying to be happy the whole time we were there.
This was her face after one of the peek a boos. She didn't like me taking a picture of her playing peek a boo. She kept quiting on me before I could get the picture!
DaKoda got restless in the afternoon and so I asked for the wagon to walk her around. It is really hard to pull a wagon and push an IV tower along with it. So after about 20 minutes, I had had enough. I went back to the room, where the IV would go off at least once every 10 minutes. It had been having a hard time for a few hours, but this was the worst. The nurse would get it to stop beeping, and like 5 minutes later, it would go off again. Finally at almost 4 pm, the nurse was worried that the IV just wasn't working anymore. She didn't want to have to prick DaKoda again, so she asked if I just wanted her to take it out and we could go home. I said sure. When she pulled the IV out, the end of it was getting bent, which is why it kept going off. While we waited for her to discharge us, I took DaKoda for another walk, IV free!
DaKoda loved the ride!
This was DaKoda's arm after we got home. Poor thing had major bruising from all the IV attempts. I tried to get a good shot of it, but these were the best ones.
Brooke had a really great time at Grandma's house. She had lots of fun playing with Aunt Denise and going to Wal-Mart. She was such a big girl and I am proud of the way she handled being away from DaKoda and I when I knew she was worried about DaKoda. Brooke is a wonderful big sister and loves, cares, protects and shows concern for her baby sister. I love them both and I am glad to say that both of them are acting like their usual selves today!