My little allergic baby...

I posted THIS on facebook:

Things i learned in the last 24 hours...
1. jackson is VERY allergic to eggs. like, stop breathing and turn blue kind of allergic.
2. if you call 911 and tell them your baby isn't breathing, the entire moraga fire department will show up at your house in about 4 minutes.
3. epinephrine is amazing. and apparently very expensive.
4. chubby baby arms make it impossible to find a vein for an IV.
5. there's nothing like a 24 hour stay in a children's hospital to make you realize how incredibly lucky we are to have two very healthy children.

So now, the real story with a few iphone pics to go along with it (since grabbing my real camera was pretty much the last thing on my mind)... in fact we were in such a hurry (obviously) we forgot the diaper bag, my wallet, my phone, and I rolled out in what was meant to be my PJs to the hospital... these are courtesy of Mark's phone.

We decided to give Jackson his first taste of egg last night.  He's never had egg, and we have been avoiding it just in case of any allergies, but decided to give it a go last night.  Mark scrambled some eggs, and gave Jackson some.  And he LOVED it.  He would've eaten a ton, but we only gave him about 5 or 6 bites.  He was really enjoying it, and he didn't get any immediate hives, so we thought that we were all good!  Then about 20 minutes later, he vomited a little bit... nothing too concerning, so we thought maybe the eggs upset his tummy a little.  He did another little vomit, and then he seemed alright after that.  So we gave him a bath, and got him all ready for bed.  I tried to nurse him and he wasn't that interested (which is unusual), so I just put him to bed anyway.  He fell asleep, and then I went to put Riley to bed.

Mark brought him in to Riley's room about 5 minutes later to show me he woke up crying, and now had hives all over his face.  I continued to put Riley to bed and Mark was going to keep Jack up so he could watch him.  he's gotten hives before, but that's as far as his allergic reactions (to unknown things) had progressed.  After I got Riley to sleep, I came down to see Jackson's hives had spread to his legs and his face looked much worse and he was itching like crazy.  I called urgent care, who said they couldn't take us, then called my mom to come watch Ri so we could take Jack to the ER.  My mom came home and as we were getting all packed up to go, Jackson vomited ALL over me.  Twice.  He was covered in hives, and then he started to get all calm, and his breathing slowed and slowed and slowed, until he wasn't breathing and his lips turned blue and he looked like he was just falling asleep, but he wasn't breathing.

I told my mom to call an ambulance, and I ran him outside into the cold air hoping it would wake him up a bit.  He opened his eyes really wide, but was still extremely lethargic, and kept closing his eyes and stopped breathing.  I had to keep saying his name and trying to keep him alert, and it seemed like forever but it was probably only 4 minutes before the ambulance and firetruck arrived.  When they got to our house Jack had regained color, but was still very lethargic and covered in hives.  This earned us an ambulance ride to children's hospital, obviously. 

Photos above taken post-epinephrine, benadryl and various other steroids/medicines via IV... he looks normal again!!

When we got to the hospital and got all checked in and registered, we were brought back to a room to wait for a doctor, and the doc took one look at him, and said ummm we need to move him he needs to be upgraded to more urgent... so we brought him to another room where they gave him the epinephrine shot in his leg, followed by the worst baby torture ever.... getting in an IV.  It took multiple tries, and multiple doctors attempting to do it, all the while Jack is screaming like I've never heard before.  They finally got it in, and administered his medicine, and then I got him to sleep.  And then we waited.  And waited.  Sitting in this emergency room, waiting for a room to open up for him upstairs since he was being admitted for the night.   Finally a few hours later (like, 3am) we got upstairs where Jack got his crib so I could at least put him down to sleep.  Of course that only lasted about half an hour, and then he just wanted to be held, so he slept for another few hours on the couch with me.

When he woke up in the morning, he was back to his normal self.  His hives were gone, he was happy and talking and laughing, getting mad at me for not letting him get down and crawl, flirting with the nurses, trying to eat the little monitor that was attached to his toes, crawling all over his crib despite the IV still stuck in his arm.  He was a total trooper.  We had to stay for a few more hours so that they could observe him, but finally we got to go home, armed with epi pens and pages of literature on egg allergies.  Oh, and a HEFTY medical bill. But a healthy baby, so that's all that matters. 

Overall, it was totally stressful, incredibly scary experience, but everyone's okay.  Babies are resilient little things, I think it will take me a lot longer to recover from that whole experience than him!