SAHD Adventures: Emergency rooms and milk proteins

Every day with my little man is an adventure. Whether we are just playing on the floor, entering intense negotiations over nap time or just out and about there is always something new to explore and discover. Most of our adventures are a lot of fun and generally result in him flashing his big toothless grin at me. Unfortunately, not all of our adventures are that much fun. Sometimes there are adventures that we would prefer to avoid all together. In preparing tonight’s post I realized that it has been three months since our least fun adventure took place and would present my wife and I with our first true test of parenthood.

My wife is in the healthcare industry (something I’ve very thankful for in this economy) and has a varied work scheduled. This particular evening she was on second shift and had left for work leaving little man and me to our own devices. It had been an otherwise normal afternoon for us. We had our nap after the early afternoon feeding followed by some play time. After his first bottle of the evening it was time for a diaper change, so off we went to do our thing. I got his diaper off, cleaned him up, got the new one on and then noticed something out of the corner of my eye. Is that blood?

Taken aback I checked again as my heart began to race. Now, I’ve always taken a look at his dirty diapers so I know what to report back to the pediatrician when she asks. Before having a child you couldn’t have convinced me that I would become that well versed in the color and frequency of bowel movements, but now I’m downright petrified. Looking over things a few times I’m convinced that there is blood in the diaper I have just changed and I am at an absolute loss as to where it came from and what to do to stop it. As luck would have it the doctor’s offices are closed for the day by the time our little adventure begins and so I reluctantly call my wife at work to discuss the best course of action.

While all of this is going on nothing is any different with our little man. He’s still laughing, giggling and smiling like he has no care in the world and nothing is bothering him. After a quick conversation with my wife we agree that the responsible decision is to take him to the emergency room and have him evaluated. So, I quickly pack him up, grab the diaper bag and steer the suburban assault vehicle towards the hospital.

Once we are at the ER there are forms to fill out, disclaimers to sign and co-pays to, well, pay. After a relatively short wait we are ushered into triage where they check his vitals. While this is happening I take the opportunity to let my wife know that we are being seen if she wanted to come down from her floor to be with us.

When we are done in triage they put us in a room, ask me to strip him down to his diaper and then hand me a tiny hospital gown to put on him. As I look at the gown in my hands they apologize to me for not having a smaller one for him as it is late in the day and they are out of the smaller sized gowns. All I can think while doing this is they make these things smaller than this? And how many times a day do they get infants in the emergency room that they are out of them?

We were just getting settled and playing on the hospital bed waiting for the doctor when my wife made it down to the children’s ER. Now, until this point I had been holding it together pretty well. I was very concerned about what was wrong with our little man, but took a good deal of consolation in that he didn’t appear to be in any discomfort or pain. As soon as my wife entered the room and saw her baby boy in a hospital gown she went from calm to crying in about three seconds. I know that men aren’t supposed to cry unless it’s their sports hero’s retirement press conference, but the confluence of events and my wife’s reaction to seeing our son on a gurney took me down.

Managing to collect ourselves before a nurse came into the room to do some tests on the diaper in question and our suspicions that it was blood was confirmed. Only two hours and three doctors later we were given our walking papers. The diagnosis? A milk protein allergy that appeared to be slow to develop because my wife largely avoided dairy products after our son was born. However, once she returned to work she resumed eating a yogurt and a protein bar for breakfast and the increased dairy intake finally started causing problems.

As little man and I headed home while mommy returned to work to finish her shift we had a quick sigh of relief. We made it through our first parenting crisis relatively unscathed and were confident that with a few changes to my wife’s diet that she would be able to continue nursing without issue.

Even as I think back now there really is nothing in life that can prepare you for seeing your four month old in a hospital gown. With all of the things it could have been we are very fortunate that what happened was something that is relatively common and will not have any long term effects on his growth or development. That being said here’s to hoping we don’t see the inside of an ER for another dozen years or so.