Two ER visits within one month

We have recently had the opportunity to meet the nice folks over at Vanderbilt Children's ER, once for each child. The first was for Kaleb about the end of November when he started complaining of stomach pain. This kid never complains of pain even when he has a really hard fall or hit. So, we really were concerned when he started complaining. Earlier that day I was nursing Chase and let Kaleb stay in my room playing with coins and it crossed my mind that that could be dangerous and I called him in to be w/ me. Well, later that night when he started complaining I asked if he had swallowed any money and he said "yes". We asked him how many and he said alot. Then we asked if he swallowed big ones or little ones and he said big ones. So, I called poison control and they told us to go to the ER for Xrays.

We were really concerned by this time so we called our friend Chris who is an anesthegiologist at Children's and he met Jason and Kaleb up there for moral support. After lots of waiting and Xrays confirming that he was constipated, they were discharged. So, Chris went and found the cool ball shown below for Kaleb and we have named it our "$400 ball" for our uneventful ER visit.A few weeks later we had a more serious problem. Kaleb had the croup and then a few days later Chase began to cough and had lots of mucous. He couldn't keep his food down and therefore became dehydrated. Our doctor told us to take him to the ER at 11pm. He had to get an IV and they couldn't find a vein and kept poking him and poking him. He was screaming and I was crying. It was terrible. They finally put it his ankle and also did breathing treatments. They had us stay overnight to monitor him and we got in our room about 4am and he slowly started to get better and we went home early afternoon that sunday.

Hopefully that will be the end of the ER visits for a long time!