After a difficult plane ride to WI and an exhausting week of car trips filled with screaming, I decided that something had to be done for the plane ride back to NY. MIL is a pediatric nurse so she suggested we give LM some benadryl to make her sleepy for the trip. That sounded fine since she had a cold anyway, maybe the meds would make her feel better as well as make her easier to deal with. MIL calculated the dosage based on LM's weight and we were good to go.
We had given her the Benadryl on Tuesday's car ride back from MN and it was a little better. She slept a lot of the car ride and there wasn't nearly as much fussing. So fast forward to Sat morning and we are waiting at the gate for our plane to board.
"Ok," Husband said,"we should give it to her now since it takes a bit to kick in."
And so we gave her the amount recommended by the medical professional and hoped that her cold wouldn't make this an even worse experience than the last time. We got on the plane and it took off. Everything was going smoothly, LM was getting sleepy, she hadn't cried during take-off and I was feeling optomistic!
Then, things took a turn for the worse. LM was asleep and she started coughing. The coughing led to gagging and soon I was covered in vomit. She had been eating during take-off to keep her ears from hurting so this wasn't that strange, but was certainly annoying given that I had to change my shirt. Luckily I had packed a little zippy sweatshirt. I left LM with Husband and walked down the aisle trying to hold my sweatshirt over my now puke covered right side when I encountered the dreaded beverage cart. Damn! I have to get through. The flight attendants were nice about it and tried to move over as much as possible to let my butt by. I finally got to the bathroom and changed my shirt. I went back to my seat (once again squeezing back between the beverage cart and other passengers' seats) and was happy to see LM sleeping peacefully on Husbands shoulder.
A few minutes later there was some more coughing, and gagging, and more vomit, which I luckily caught with a burp cloth since Husband did not have an extra shirt. LM was really out. each time she would throw up she wasn't really waking up and would pass back out right afterwards. I started to worry a little. Was she really sick? was the plane making her nauseaus? Then again! Cough, cough, and woosh...out came the larger gush of puke that has ever escaped the lips of a creature weighing 16 pounds!!! Holy crap! Husband and I both jumped back a little while Husband held a limp little monster in the air. I wiped furiously at the puke that was everywhere (even on the woman behind us - which I felt a little bad about, but at that moment, I just couldn't care).
My baby had just vomited enough to fill at least a pint glass (without even eating that much) and to top it off, we couldn't wake her up. we shook her gently, we called her name, we put ice on her lips and while she would react slightly (to the ice anyway) she would not open her eyes. I pulled up her eyelids an seeing that he eyes weren't rolling back in her head made me feel a teeny bit better, but not much. Her breathing seemed ok, but I didn't know what to do. I felt so helpless. We were on a plane, if she stopped breathing we couldn't even take her to the hospital. Oh God! I was panicking. It must be the Benadryl, what if I've killed her. I was freaking out. tears were starting to form at the corners of my eyes and I just sat there watching her, making sure that her little chest was still going up and down. That was all I could do.
She didn't vomit again and after about 1/2 and hour - 45 minutes LM slowly opened her eyes an looked at me sleepily. I was so happy I can't even explain to you the feeling of relief that washed over me. I didn't kill my baby! Thanks to a God I don't really even believe in!!!
30 minutes later we were on the ground and LM was pretty much back to normal, although a little cranky because now she was hungry after puking shards of her pelvis onto mommy, daddy, and the lady in seat 5C (sorry again!)
It was quite an adventure. One that I hope to never repeat. I don't know if I have ever been that scared in my whole life.
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