The day started out like any normal day but by the time all the kids were down for their afternoon naps my stomach wasn’t feeling quite right. Thankfully my husband was home and not working at the fire station this particular afternoon.
The house was quiet and peaceful but my insides were anything but. And soon I found myself making a mad dash to the bathroom as my stomach heaved up everything I had eaten that day. As I lay curled around the toilet I was so thankful I had given the bathroom a good scrubbing earlier. It is truly the little things friends.
After I had expelled what I assumed was the entire contents of my stomach another round of cramps, spasms, and intestinal distress hit my body. After it was over I slowly lowered myself back down to the cool tile floor. This happened for another two hours. My husband entered the bathroom to check on me and discovered me in the fetal position hugging the toilet with my pants around my ankles. Basically the most flattering position ever.
He asked if I needed anything, let me know he was taking the kids out for dinner, and that he would be picking up a prescription of Zofran for me at the pharmacy. And with that he earned himself the best husband of the year award.
As my family left, I managed to crawl my way out of the bathroom onto the carpet and waited. A few more trips back and forth to the bathroom to continue to empty my already empty stomach was how I spent my time waiting for my family to return. Shortly before the kids bedtime my husband entered our master bedroom with a water bottle and the anti-nausea medication. Hallelujah!
An hour later the cramps and nausea had started to subside and I decided a shower would be a good idea. After getting cleaned up and smelling much better I was looking forward to crawling into bed for the rest of the night when I heard a commotion happening outside the bedroom door. The kids had been asleep for 45 minutes at this point as I heard my daughter retching in the hallway and I knew the night had only just begun.
On the other side of the door I had no way of knowing that my husband was frantically carrying our daughter into the hallway as she continued to be sick. In a panicked rush to get her off the now soaked carpet he placed her on the tile in the bathroom where she proceeded to get sick on the floor, cabinets, and into the baby bathtub. Picking her up again he finally decided to place her in the bathtub which is where I found her.
There was no way to prepare for what I saw when I opened the bedroom door and followed the trail of vomit from the hallway into the bathroom. It was everywhere. The horrible stench filled my nose and made my eyes water. I carefully got her out of the tub and set her on the floor and went to work quickly cleaning. With the bathtub clean I filled it with water confident that she wouldn’t get sick for the short amount of time I needed her in the tub to rinse her off. I was wrong.
While my husband stripped the sheets off her bed as quietly as possible in hopes of not waking her two brothers I tried to clean her up best as I could. The clean bathwater quickly became not so clean as she continued to get sick and all I could do was praise God for Zofran.
I cleaned her up to the best off my ability and set her in front of the television with a garbage can. I then went to work trying to clean the large chunks of partially digested food out of the carpet in the hallway. I came up with the brilliant idea that I would vacuum the vomit up out of the carpet. It worked amazingly well and I then sprayed carpet cleaner all over the offending odor and stain that remained. I scrubbed away until the hallway looked fairly decent. I went to lay on the floor next to my daughter exhausted. Thinking I had at least 15 minutes to rest before she became sick again I heard my husband trying to get our oldest out of the top bunkbed. Which could only mean one thing. And yes friends, he was also sick.
After cleaning up the bottom bunk bed my husband decided to check on our oldest and the baby one last time before closing the door. I am not sure how both boys slept through everything up until this point. As my husband checked on our oldest sleeping he discovered a mountain of vomit piled perfectly on his comforter. This child does not liked to be disturbed from his sleep and was reluctant to move until my husband told him he could come watch a movie with his sister. How the baby slept through all this amazes me. I now had two kids with me, with garbage cans, watching a movie while my husband started to clean up our kids bedroom in the dark so he didn’t wake the baby.
It wouldn’t be until the next morning when we discovered the true aftermath of what had happened. The wall had taken on a new texture and color and was covered in vomit as was the kids bunkbed. Upon examining the crib we saw that there was a small pile of vomit that had landed within inches of the baby’s head while he slept.
With the washing machine working overtime late into the hours of the early morning the house became quiet once again. The television was turned off, the kids weren’t getting sick as frequently, my stomach was doing better, and the three of us camped out in the living room with hope that Josh would be spared from getting sick as well.
But alas, that was not to be. Our entire household became sick with this horribleness. And our poor daughter had it off and on for 4 days. As awful as this was at the time sometimes you just have to laugh. Which is what we did over the course of this weeklong battle with the stomach bug. Being upset wasn’t going to help and when we think back over how we must have looked and acted during this weeklong illness we can’t help but giggle. In the back of my mind this scenario had always been one that I had hoped to never experience. But we all survived, minus a few pounds.
Oh, and just in case you were wondering, don’t vacuum vomit up off the floor with your vacuum. This incident happened several weeks ago and after disinfecting our entire Dyson it has just recently stopped smelling like vomit each time we use it.
