A visit to the ER

Unfortunately Henry had his first visit to the emergency room on Thursday night. He's o.k. and it turns out we probably didn't need to go, but we were erring on the side of safety. I was just thinking the other day how wonderful it was that Henry hadn't been sick for months. I guess I jinxed us because at about 6:30 on Thursday evening Henry vomited...a lot. He was fine all day on Thursday. We went swimming and played, and he was in a great mood all day. Then in the late afternoon/early evening, he got pretty lethargic, and didn't want to eat or drink. A while after his big vomiting episode, we tried giving him a bottle, but he quickly vomited again. He kept asking for a drink, saying "cup...cup." But every time he took even a few sips of water, he threw up again. He didn't have a fever, so it seemed strange for him to be so sick. I tried putting him to bed at 8:00, and he actually slept for almost an hour, but then he woke up and threw up in his crib. Then he threw up several more times between 9:00 and midnight. Finally Jeff called the advice nurse. She asked whether Henry had experienced any head trauma. I immediately thought "NO," but Jeff answered that he had been hit by a swing and knocked over on Wednesday evening. I completely forgot about that because it really didn't seem like a big deal. My friend's son was swinging in Henry's swing, and Henry walked in front of the swing. The hard plastic swing hit him on the forehead and knocked him down. I didn't even see it happen because I was inside the house, but Jeff didn't make a big deal about it at the time. As soon as he told the advice nurse about this possible "head injury" she advised him to take Henry to the ER, but we weren 't really sure whether it was warranted. We debated about it for a while (it was past midnight at this point, and Henry had FINALLY fallen asleep 10 minutes earlier), and decided to call the emergency room and see what they had to say. I spoke to an ER nurse, and asked whether we should bring him in and her answer was, "ABSOLUTELY." She said that any time a baby hits his/her head and there is vomiting in the next 24 hours, you should bring them in. I immediately started crying. We got Henry up, he threw up a little, we got ourselves ready, and we headed to the hospital. Once there, they needed to check Henry's vital signs, and he wasn't too happy about the pulse/oxygen monitor that they attached to his toe. If he thought that was bad, the next thing they did was take his temperature...rectally. He had a FIT! He sobbed and screamed and cried and didn't calm down for a long time. We were finally seen by a doctor at about 2:00 a.m. He said that we they could do a CAT scan to check for head trauma, but they would have to start an I.V. and sedate him. Then we would have to wait for the sedation to wear off. But, since Henry wasn't exhibiting any other signs of head trauma, he didn't think it was completely necessary. We opted to give him a Zofran for his nausea, and let them observe him for an hour. We finally got home and into bed by about 3:45 a.m. He seemed pretty good all day on Friday, other than not eating or drinking much. Then, this morning (after NOT vomiting for about 34 hours), Henry drank about 8 oz. of milk and vomited A LOT again. Since then he's been absolutely fine. I really don't know what to make of it. No fever. Lots of vomiting. But, he seems to be feeling great right now. We'll just hope that it's a stomach bug, and that it's long gone now. It was a horrible scary night, but we're just happy he's o.k.