Vomit

In our house, the worst offense a child can make to a parent is vomiting. Cleaning up vomit is disgusting, talking about vomit is disgusting as well. Blame Jill for this post.

So far in a combined total of almost nine years of children we've had a surprisingly small amount of vomit.

All of our kids were born with some reflux, Malachi had it pretty bad when his tiny body was born (that contributed to the 14 day stay in the NICU at birth), but I don't remember it being real bad at home. He was on meds though.

Simon and Coen were NOT on reflux meds. During the time I was able to nurse them it wasn't bad. But once the formula started it got worse. A very vivid memory was when John was holding Simon at a friend’s house. We were there on a short trip through Dallas on the way to Costa Rica and they were hosting a party for us so we could see all of our friends. I wasn't in the room, but I heard a commotion from the living room and was summoned (loudly) by my husband. when I arrived I saw him holding our baby away from his body and a bit of spit up on his shirt. I certainly didn't think this was enough spit up for the commotion I heard. Upon further inspection I noticed that the vomit (it has been upgraded due to volume) was all over John's back and the back of our friends couch. It looked like he'd lost his whole bottle. That day lives strongly in our memory.

With Coen we've had lots of vomit. He did have some reflux, just a bit, when I moved him to formula. When he cried after being put in bed he would get so worked up that he would lose his lunch, or breakfast, or dinner...you get it. We ended up starting to put him to sleep before putting him to bed. That ended at about two and a half months old. At three months old he had a cold so bad that it triggered some asthma. He had so much phlegm that he would gag on it, and not infrequently would vomit from the gagging. One time, we fed him his bottle successfully, waited about half an hour after the feeding and THEN put him in his car seat to go out. We got the whole family in the car and started driving. Right out of the drive way he starts coughing. John and I look at each other but we didn't stop driving. We then heard the oh too familiar noise. We asked Malachi if he was vomiting and sure enough he was. It was all over Coen, all over his car seat and the seat belt, and a bit on Malachi's car seat.

There was the time when Malachi came to our room in the middle of the night to tell us his bed was wet. I don't know what state of mind we were in, but we didn't ask questions, we just told him to go back to bed. He obeyed and a couple minutes later I got up to use the restroom. To not wake the sleeping baby in my room, I used the bathroom out in the hall. Near the bathroom I could smell that smell...you know the smell. I poked my head in his room and saw him curled up on a small corner of his bed where it didn't reach. How did didn't reach that corner, I don't know. It was all over his mattress, the bed frame, the floor, the stuffed Tiger, his pillows, and for some reason his mattress pad wasn't on his bed, so it went through the mattress as well.

There was the other time, quite recently, when Coen was in bed and he was crying, and he didn't stop, and the crying intensified. So I went in with the lights off to not bother Simon, who was still awake anyway. I put my hand on Coen, and into a goopy disgusting mess, and then smelled that familiar smell. That time it was all over Coen, the crib, and a few things in the crib.

I think that was the last time anyone vomited in the house. But of course, since I wrote about it and how disgusting it is, I'm sure it'll happen very soon.