It's 2am and I know exactly where my son is

If you're eating, or squeamish, move on past this post. Don't even bother trying to read it. Seriously. You've been warned!

It's 2am on the Saturday of the holiday weekend. I was halfway packed for the trip Nicky and I were taking to go see his Grammie, Aunt Liz and Aunt Jodi. Nicky had already had a good dinner (we'd gone out to TGI Fridays and he'd eaten pasta and broccoli and then later he had a small ice cream from McDonalds. He'd had a fun bath with Daddy and about 4 stories and a nice long rock-a-bye with Mommy.

We were all set to be packed tonight and leave early in the morning for our three-day weekend extravaganza. Just Nicky and me. Tom was staying home to watch the dogs and work on the house.

And then about 20 minutes after Nicky fell asleep...he started coughing and then calling for me. Now, this isn't unusual. Nearly every night he comes to his door and calls for me or Tom to come do rock-a-bye with him some more. And we usually tell him to go to sleep for a while and then, depending on our homework situation, one of us usually will go in and rock him for a few minutes and put him back down.

But tonight I sensed he needed me more than normal. He wasn't crying like he usually tries (kind of a fake, manipulative cry usually). Instead he was just calling for me. I put down the stuff I was packing to go give him a quick rock-a-bye, but when I opened the door he was standing there covered in vomit. His bed was covered, pillow, animals, the wall behind his headboard... even the carpet on both sides of his bed had some. It was pretty icky.

I figured he'd been coughing from his allergies, as he'd been doing for months, and this time it just made him puke. That happened to me a lot as a kid with my allergies. I was super nice to him, because I know how it feels to be in that situation, and gently led him to the bathroom to clean him up. I put him in a warm bath and cleaned him off. He didn't want to get out of the tub, so I let him be there for a bit while I cleared off his bed and stuff. Tom was getting the car ready for our trip and bringing in Nicky's carseat to clean it. He took over cleaning the bedclothes outside with the hose before throwing them in the washer.

I finally got Nicky out of the tub, into a clean nightshirt and diaper, and set him in the chair in his room while I made his bed. He just sat there looking at a book. A bit pale and wan.

We got him settled into my lap for rock-a-bye. He wouldn't let me leave him to go change so I was still wearing pukey pants, but I figured he'd fall asleep soon. He did doze off pretty quickly and then rolled on his back in my arms and was sleeping nicely. I was just about to put him to bed when he coughed twice and started throwing up again.

How great that I finally got to experience that age-old tradition of catching your child's puke in your hand. I calmly called for Tom, who brought a towel, and then got Nicky into the bathroom where he finished puking in the toilet. Tom must have called the doctor at some point around then. I held Nicky for a bit, but then put him back down to sleep in his bed, on a towel.

Maybe 45 minutes later I heard him throwing up again and ran to him. Got him back to the bathroom and after this I didn't even bother putting a new shirt on him. I just wrapped him in a towel and held him. The doctor called back and Tom talked to her. Basically we were told to try the tsp of Gatorade every 30 minutes and take him to the doctor in the morning. Thank goodness our pediatrician has Saturday hours.

After putting Nicky back to bed again he was down for an hour or so. Tom went to the store and bought Gatorade.

My laptop decided to crap out at this point. For some reason the screen won't work anymore. Tom helped me hook it up to the big monitor we have for our desktop, so I can still access my stuff. Guess I'll be giving Dell a call tomorrow too.

And then we heard Nicky again. When I came in he'd just started coughing and I was able to get him to the edge of his bed to the trashcan I'd left there. Mostly it went in there this time. Tom got a washcloth and I cleaned him up. Nicky was so exhausted by this time that his legs were collapsing under him, so I just held him for a while, wrapped in a towel.

I just put him down a few minutes ago again. Tom and I are up and now it's 2:30am. We're kind of afraid to go to sleep. I'm thinking I might move my machine into Nicky's room and sleep in there with him tonight.

Nicky's not running any fever at all. If anything he's cooler than normal. His stomach is really gurgling and he's burped quite a bit since this started, so we thought maybe it was just he ate too much or something. But we'd have expected it to stop after one or two times. The last few times though it's just bile and dry heaves, so that doesn't seem like just an upset stomach to me.

We did eat out, so I'm concerned about possible food poisoning, but I would expect a fever with that. He doesn't seem to have any pain or swelling in his abdomen when it's palpated, so an obstruction seems unlikely. I would expect a fever with a virus or a bacteria, so I just don't know what this could be.

I feel a little queasy myself, but that didn't start till after all this, so I think that's just a reaction to seeing, smelling and cleaning up puke. (Although I'm pretty sure Nicky has no idea that I think it's gross. I've been very calm. A+ for me!)

I'm off to Google symptoms now and will probably convince myself it's something really wild by the time I take him to the doctor tomorrow. At first we thought he'd probably be fine and we could still go, but I'm thinking we're pretty much grounded for the weekend now. Darn it! I promise we'll get down there soon Mom!

UPDATE:
Well, according to my Googling, it looks like the most likely culprit is food poisoning. That's the only one listed on the Dr. Sears site that says it often has no fever. Nicky was crawling under the table at one point, so who knows what kind of bacteria he could have picked up. The site also indicated this is usually short-lived (12 hours or so) so he might be fine soon. But I hear him now!

UPDATE 10am:
He seems ok this morning. He's holding down Gatorade fine. I'm going to give him some toast soon and see how that goes. Am I crazy for thinking we might still be able to go?