Today, after battling flu like symptoms since early Monday morning, we decided to take Jonathan to the pediatrician. He hadn't been able to keep fluids or food down for almost three days and had not eaten much the previous two days before that. He was very lethargic (understandably) and had lost almost a full pound over this time. After our visit to the pediatrician, we decided to hospitalize him in order to get more fluids and food in him. His doctor suspected that he had the rotavirus (everyone gets it but over time build an immunity to it).
Because we were going to be admitted to the hospital anyway, we also decided now was the time to run some of the tests that were inevitably coming. Our hope is that we will find some answers as to why he doesn't want to eat...either a medical or behavioral reason. If all the medical tests come back negative, we may need to pursue other options in the short term to get him enough nutrition. The simplest and easiest option is to have them put a tube directly into his stomach from his side. We can feed him that way until he learns to eat enough on his own over the coming weeks and months. Obviously, that would be a last resort.
We weren't completely sure what was going on until Julia also started to vomit after we had been admitted to the hospital. To us, it seemed pretty clear that we had caught something - probably at our visit to Children's Museum this past weekend.
I took these pictures when we first got to the hospital:
These pictures were taken the next morning, after about 15 hours on an IV. He was back to his old self and had gained back most of the weight he had lost. Although "playtime" was pretty short, it's good to know that he was probably just sick and that we made the right decision to bring him in. Our next goal is to get through all of the tests and arrive at a long-term feeding solution.
