Or shall we call her.... Gastro G :-S

We had a fabulous long weekend... our first bout of gastro supplied undoubtedly by childcare. The first to fall victim was our beautiful baby boy... obviously infected by the love and kisses bestowed upon him by his sister immediately as she walks in the door from daycare of an afternoon.

Friday evening he vomited in his cot 3 times without a cry or any sign to let us know something was amiss... such a placid little thing he is that even on the third time (which I was standing outside the door for and recognised as a spew), soaking wet and stinking, vomit through his hair he didn't cry. I thought nothing of it other than, oh he's been vomiting so got him cleaned up, took him back to bed with us and fed him again.... and wore the lot. This is where I start to worry. My not quite 5 month old baby is unable to keep down breastmilk... something is seriously wrong! I tried again over the night, just letting him suck for a minute and then taking him off to try and just get small amounts of fluid over him, keeping him upright after feeds. In the end I threw Chuq out, propped myself up with a heap of pillows and just tried to rest with him in arms. He got a couple of hours sleep I got less. 5.30am and I try another feed. Wore it again and made the decision to take him to the hospital. Left home at 7am, him having not kept down a feed for nearly 12 hours I was starting to get concerned about dehydration. I don't know who it was who told me that if you need to take a child to the ED take them first thing in the morning but bless you.
We were processed and triaged pretty promptly... the triage nurse took one look at him and exclaimed with a huge grin on her face 'well, aren't you ugly' and managed to coax a smile out of my very flat baby boy.

So we were seen pretty quickly and I gave him another feed whilst waiting for the doctor. I caught my first letdown in a towel, thought it might be too much for him and then fed him for about 10 minutes and he fell asleep. Of course he didn't throw up one drop whilst in the hospital so we were off again on our merry way by 9am.
I went to grab something to eat, but a birthday present and wandered the city for a couple of hours as the little mite had fallen asleep and there was no way I was waking him. Still no spew, and no indication this was a horribly contagious, fast hitting gastro.

Arrived back at my parents' house where I was supposed to have spent the morning shovelling concrete and he had spewed in the car, only a tiny bit though.
The day went on, one more power spew, some small spews and then the other end started. Oh.my.goodness. Baby Beehinds Petite AI2s are AMAZING! How does a nappy so small contain a poo of such magnitude? As the day wore on, he was much brighter, almost back to normal. Thank goodness that was over. Oh how naive.
Sunday morning we wake to find that nobody has been sick overnight. Chuq heads out very early to do the 10km 'Run the Bridge' fun run. Mum and Dad have very kindly Kept G overnight so H and I stayed in bed until he got home.

Early afternoon I packed both kids up into the pram and did my 6km circuit, a couple of minutes faster than last time too! Felt pretty light headed when I got home but nothing a glass or two of fizzy soft drink didn't fix. Had continued light headed episodes over the rest of the day, just put it down to the walk. Wrong.

Dinner time... I looked at it and headed back to the couch. No, Chuq's cooking is NOT actually that bad. I just couldn't bring myself to even consider eating.
And thus begins another VERY long night. I doubt I slept a wink.. if I wasn't gastro-ing it up or feeding a baby I was laying down with such a bad headache there was no chance of me sleeping. Then half way through the night I heard footsteps in the hallway and the other adult spewing up his guts. Uh-Oh.

Come 7.30am I phoned my parents to see if they could take miss G for the day as there was no way we could look after an active toddler given that neither of us could stand without a headspin. No, Mum had it too.

G watched more TV on Monday than the rest of her life combined I think (OK, slight exaggeration but she has never ever before had the TV on all day... she actually asked to turn it off at one point!). I spent most of the day in bed physically not able to get out, Chuq was mainly on the couch watching G. By 5pm after a nice long nap with H I felt well enough to put on a load of washing. Didn't go to bed until late but ended up feeding H ALL night anyway. I'm guessing that after H being sick then me catching it my supply had taken a bit of a beating.

So, Tuesday... Chuq has stayed home from work in case he is still contagious. G and I braved the supermarket for a few things for lunch, rang Mum to see how she is and she tells us that Dad has caught it too. Fabulous... the man who cannot handle spew is vomiting. At least we feel OK Tuesday.

Wednesday everyone is better finally, Chuq back at work.

G is still well. She is now to be known as Gastro G.