My three year old, Doodle, surprised me yesterday morning by vomiting all over the couch just before I was supposed to take Sugarplum to a special gymnastics practice. He had complained about an hour before that he felt like he was going to throw up but he was acting fine so I just brushed it off.
After putting Pipsqueak down for a morning nap and doing a few other things around the house, I sat down to do some blog work with high hopes of finishing up a post. Our black, poofy cat, Frank, sat between Doodle and I on the couch. Doodle leaned down towards Frank and then sat back up crying, grasping his face and whining Frank’s name. I thought perhaps Frank had scratched Doodle’s lip which is still tender from when he busted it a few months ago but after a few cries he said “me needs a bowl!”
I ran to the kitchen to grab him a bowl but wasn’t fast enough. Doodle’s breakfast covered the couch. As I cleaned him up I asked Honeybun to call my parents, who were planning to come over for lunch, to ask them to come right away so I could get Sugarplum to gymnastics without having to wake up the baby or put Doodle in the car for over an hour driving to the gym and back.
When I got back from dropping Sugarplum, Doodle was sitting at the table finishing hubby’s breakfast (an english muffin with peanut butter) and acting completely normal. “Me not throw up, mommy!”
The rest of the day went the same way. He had lunch and played outside while I ran back to the gym to get Sugarplum. I laid everyone down for a nap, hopped in the shower and settled back down to get some work done.
About 30 minutes later, Doodle came down claiming he wasn’t feeling well again. I sat him on the couch with a bowl and he proceeded to flop around, wear the bowl as a hat and act like a typical three year old.
He asked for some water and I obliged (my attempts at limiting his intake has been useless and he was acting completely normal.) Big mistake. He almost immediately started vomiting again. A lot. Yet somehow he managed to get most of it in the bowl!
He threw up again one more time just before bed and both girls went to bed with bowls claiming to feel sick as well. We had two more vomiting instances in the night (Sugarplum and then Doodle again). But the vomiting adventures of yesterday were nothing in the scope of my vomiting experiences as a mommy.
Here are a few of the highlights from my dealing with kids vomiting:
When Sugarplum was a baby, she threw up any time I drank tea. It took me a few times to figure out what was causing the vomiting and one day while out running errands when she was a few weeks old, I sat her car seat on the floor at the craft store while I looked at something and she projectile vomited everywhere. I had to carry her out to the car to change her clothes, dripping vomit.
Once we returned to Dublin after Sugarplum was born, Hubby was traveling a lot for work. I spent a lot of that winter on my own with the two girls during Sugarplum’s hysterical screaming phase which prompted a frustrated Facebook post one dreary winter night that read:
“Nothing says motherhood like holding your hysterical infant while your two year old throws up all over you.”
The first time we left the girls overnight with my parents after Doodle was born, he threw up in the car on the way home. We heard him coughing funny so pulled into a parking lot to check on him. While I changed Doodle, hubby cleaned up the car seat and when he took it off the base, vomit was dripping down through the harness slots and the base was filled!
Of course, it’s not always the kids who get sick and I got to experience what it’s like to be pregnant, out of town and on my own with two kids when hubby got super sick while visiting Jacksonville. He couldn’t leave the hotel room for days so I was left keeping the girls busy on my own.
Sugarplum also got really sick while visiting Colorado one time. She was vomiting for days and couldn’t even hold down water. After about 36 hours of the nonsense, I started giving her tiny amounts of pumped breastmilk which was the only thing she managed to keep down for a few days.
When Honeybun was 4 or 5, I was getting her ready for ballet class one afternoon after she took a long nap. She was really sluggish and kind of whiny. As I put her tights on, she started throwing up and ended up slipping and falling in her own puke pile when I tried to send her to the bathroom in case there was more coming.
Then, of course, there was the little gem the day before we headed to Colorado last fall when Pipsqueak was just a tiny little thing that ended in this:
And my most recent adventure of play-by-play vomiting thanks to my three year old when it was me who was throwing up a few months ago.
I remember the night my 5 year old son vomit a lot!!He has eaten cookies and sandwitch.Arround 5 o’clock he come to my bed and said”Mummy i wanna pukee” i put him to the toilet and he thew up a LOT. We sleep together after this.About 15 minutes later he said”Mummy bring me a bowl!!I wanna pukee!”I ran to the kitchen…but he stared threw up on the floor!!It was awful night!!But in the morning he felt better!!