Picklebug's trip to the Hospital

Last night I brought Picklebug to the ER. He had vomited a few times throughout the day on Saturday and I was starting to worry about dehydration. Now remember that Picklebug is only 16 weeks old - he can't even sit up yet. So it's been especially hard over the past 24 hours to watch my cooing, smiling baby become lethargic and listless.

Turns out poor PB was so dehydrated that after numerous sticks (about 7 over a 2 hour period) the pediatric nurses still couldn't find a vein to draw blood. At this point I was SCREAMING on the inside for it all to be over. My poor baby was writhing on the examination table, crying out and staring at me like "why are you letting them do this, mom?" He was so sick he didn't even have any tears.

If all of this wasn't bad enough - it was nearly midnight when it all went down. And of course things always seem so much worse at midnight. I found myself losing hope and wondering if we would ever come out of this alive. If you are like me you just assume that nurses and doctors know what they are doing. You put your faith in the fact that they've studied how to do this stuff, taken and passed some sort of exam and have lots of experience handling situations like this. But watching these nurses fumble with my tiny baby's arms, hands and feet trying to get an IV in his little body makes me wonder. They are just human beings like me. And if they are like me they probably procrastinated in their schoolwork, went to class tired and may not have taken the best notes. And while they work up here night after night, how often do they really see a dehydrated 4 month old?

Now don't get me wrong, this situation hasn't crushed all of my faith in the medical community. But what it has done has reminded me that the only ONE who can truly heal my baby is the Lord. And in the wee hours of the night it was to Him that I turned. And God has answered my prayers in the form of smiles from my baby this morning, wet diapers throughout the day and in the visitation and phone calls of my friends.