The Perfect Storm

We had our first inconsolable blowout with Evan over the weekend. It was our last night in Maine (bonus night because of the weather). Jack, Evan and I had all been fighting a bug while we were up there but Evan was a trooper and still in good spirits despite his stuffy/runny nose and cough.

Right before I was going to give Evan a bath, he burst out crying. I figured he was cold and put him in the bath to warm him up. Didn't work, so I made the bath as quick as possible. He got so worked up that towards the end of the bath he actually stopped breathing for a few seconds which freaked us both out. I finished up the bath as fast as I could and got him dressed quickly so I could nurse him, figuring he was hungry. He stopped breathing a few more times, only a few seconds each. Jack ran upstairs to ask his family to pray and his mom calmed us down by saying that it happens to most babies that when they get themselves that worked up they'll stop breathing for a few seconds and then get scared and start crying and breathing again. Jack and all his siblings had done that as babies. That eased my mind a little but it still killed me to see his little terrified face each time. He was able to nurse a little but was caught in a cycle of losing his breath and crying for about an hour. We called the doctor and he gave us a few things to check for - hair wrapped around a finger or toe, scratch on the eye - and asked a few questions. We were instructed to give him a dose of children's tylenol which fortunately we had packed and if he was still inconsolable after 45 minutes to take him to the ER. We were hoping and praying we wouldn't have to do that! I can't imagine trying to strap him into the carseat and drive a half hour to the hospital. Thankfully our prayers were answered and he fell asleep in my arms about 35 minutes later. We were wondering if it was an ear infection or something intestinal. Or just utter exhaustion.

He woke up for his normal early-morning feeding at 4am showing no signs of distress and went back to sleep afterwards. Then woke up for the morning around 8am totally fine. We gave him another dose of tylenol preemptively thinking it could still be an ear infection. We got a follow up call from the doctor a short while later asking if we could make it back in time for a 4pm appointment. Jack checked with work since he was supposed to be available remotely if they needed him. They said to do what he had to do and they would take care of things so we packed up in a whirlwind and headed out at 10:30am - just barely enough time to make it there. We were about 15 minutes out when I went for some chapstick and saw my phone and without thinking I blurted out "do you have your phone?" and Jack checked his pockets only to realize what he thought was his phone was batteries. We frantically called back and asked if we could meet halfway to pick up the phone which we did. Shoot... now we're actually getting on the road at 11am. Could we make it back in 5 hours? We decided we were in it for the haul - no pit stops and if Evan got hungry I had to pump a bottle and give it to him on the go. We ended up needing a quick fuel stop but we pulled in the doctor's parking lot at 3:56pm. PHEW! (don't ask what our average speed was). Well it wasn't an ear infection and nothing else that the doctor could see was out of the ordinary. He said Evan would give us the next clue.

Well Evan has been totally fine since, other than fighting off the rest of his sniffles. It must have just been a perfect storm of hunger, exhaustion (he hadn't napped much that day) and "I don't want a bath right now, why aren't you listening to me!!!" which launched him into that cycle of losing his breath, getting scared and crying, and calming down, only to lose his breath again. It was really scary at the time but we're glad he's ok and we have that notch under our parent belt.