Leina is sick.

Sick seems so benign a word to try and begin to describe her right now. If I took every cold and fever and illness she has ever had since birth and rolled them all together, they still wouldn’t come close to what we have on her hands.

It started Friday afternoon. She was happy and playing and them….whamo…vomit. Lots of it. This was the first time she’s ever thrown up so both she and I were seriously freaked out. I stripped her down and threw her in the bath to clean her off all the while teaching her a new word. Vomit. She looked up at me with her big blue eyes while I rinsed her down and said in her serious baby voice….”mommy, vomit yucky.” I couldn’t agree more.

I chalked it up to something she ate from breakfast ’cause she seemed fine. Until she woke from her nap. I heard her, via the baby monitor, fuss up, cry, and then start gagging. I rushed upstairs to find her shaking and sobbing “vomit…vomit…vomit.” Once more we stripped down and headed for bath. Surely, I thought, this must be the end of it. Ha!

For dinner I gave her plain rice which she wolfed down. Of course, about three minutes later, up it came. It was about 6:30pm and I was getting a bit freaked out so I called Kev and he came home to a very sick child. From about 7pm until 3:30am she threw up every hour. It was heartbreaking. Kevin and I turned into the dynamic parent duo.

When we’d hear the gagging start, we’d hop from our bed and rush into her room. Kevin would wipe her down and hand her to me. I’d do my best to clean her face, cloths, and hair while Kevi stripped the crib and threw on new sheets. Then I’d rock her back down to sleep while Kevin ran laundry all to start the process all over in an hour. We were changing sheets so often that we ran out of fresh ones. All we could do was clean the messy area as best as possible and then turn her around so her head was on a clean spot. Once the sheet was soiled on both ends, then Kev would strip it off.

So, at 3:30am, I’m thinking, “wow, this is horrible. It just can’t get any worse.” Ha! The next time we rushed to the crib not only was our poor child covered in vomit, she had blown her diaper with the worst diareha I’ve every seen. Gross. And so it continued with the double whammy of vomit and pooing all over the sheets every hour.

Saturday dawned and Leina had a fever. The vomit had stopped but she was still blowing out diapers. And she was listless. She wouldn’t talk or walk or even eat. If you did coax a word out of her, it was in a hoarse whisper from a throat rubbed raw from non-stop puking. All she would do was sleep in our arms. Our house was so eerily quiet. I though, “man, how could this get any worse?” Ha!

Saturday night, no vomit. Yippee! Still changing sheets due to diaper overload but we were thinking she was getting better…..until we saw the wierd rash/blisters forming all over her body. They’d start small, then merge together into these giant hot welts. By now, I was beyond freaked out so I paged the on-call doctor to find out if an ER visit was in our future. She assured me that it was probably just a food or bacteria reaction and not to worry. Easy for her to say. Nevertheless, Leina did appear to perk up Sunday night and I thought, “phew, looks like we’re out of the woods.” Ha!

Last night, at 11pm, we heard her wake and start gagging. Yep, we had another round of vomit and blown diapers last night. Today, she has just given up on eating all together. I don’t blame her really. The rash is going down just as the doctor predicted. The newest twist is that every few minutes Leina grabs her belly and diaper area and starts to scream “OWWWWIE! OWWWWIE!” Best I can tell, she’s having some horrible stomach cramping and there’s nothing I can do.

She’s down for a nap right so. So far, every nap as ended with screaming from either vomitting or severe cramping. I’ve given up thinking this is going to get better. We are, after all, on day four of this horrible stomach bug and she hasn’t really improved at all. I keep telliing myself that this too will pass but it seems like a bad groundhog day to me. The same horror over and over. I dread what the night will bring.

I miss my girl so much. Her spirit is gone. She won’t eat a bite and will only lie listlessly on the sofa in a sort of semi-coma daze between stomach cramps. I haven’t had to put away toys or books for days. Dishes are minimal. Our washing machine hasn’t stopped running since Friday and the sound of the churning is the only noise in the house right now. My only consolation is the knowledge that Leina is not the first. Every mom in my play group has been hit by this bug. They all said the vomited lasted four days, the diarreha even longer. So I guess all I can do is keep clean sheets on hand and press the fluids but it’s hard, so hard to see my little lion without her roar.