Front-Facing Car Puke

This post should have been able to focus on a huge milestone--Munch, at 2 years old, is now front-facing in his carseat! Hubs and I have been so excited for this change, yet another step in growing up. No longer is Munch crunched against the back of the seat, his long legs folded over, with only himself in his monkey mirror to look at.

But. The first front-facing car ride was more exciting than Hubs and I ever could have dreamed.

Hubs heroically turned the seat around in under an hour, having to resort to an online reference video only once. Because the weather was finally nice, and to give Munch a treat, we decided to drive up to Wegmans, about a half hour away, instead of going to our normal grocery store just down the street.

At first, everything went as I envisioned: I kept turning around to say hi to Munch, he kept giving me his little "I can't believe I'm doing this" side-eye smile in return. About halfway through the trip, though, Munch's demeanor changed. He didn't smile in response. He hardly made eye contact. I told Hubs, "He's out of it." And I thought he was going to fall asleep.

We got to Wegmans and parked. Hubs and I turned around and I started to tell Munch about this great grocery store when ....

The child puked.

Horrible, wrenching heaves that wouldn't stop for quite some time.

I won't go into more detail. But believe me, it was bad. Puke. Everywhere.

I jumped out of the car and froze. The problem seemed so huge, I couldn't start to fix it. Hubs, bless his soul, went straight to the backseat and started extricating Munch, instructing me to get the extra outfit out of the diaper bag (thank God we still keep that thing kinda stocked!). Then I ran in to Wegmans (we're at a grocery store, self! they sell everything you could need) and got wet paper towels.

I changed poor, shaking Munch while Hubs, again heroically, started scrubbing out the car as best he could.

The biggest question (besides how we were going to make it home in such a disgusting car) was why the puke.

• First thought--car sick. Could it be a coincidence that on Munch's first front-facing ride, he threw up? Although, he's never showed any propensity for motion sickness, either in the car, as Daddy twirls him all over in their dancing and rough-housing, or on the Dumbo ride at Disney.
• Second thought--his medicine. Munch is on a very high dose of antibiotic to try to get rid of this lingering ear infection. 
• Third thought--bug. A stomach bug that could ravage the rest of us? Joy.

His doctor said that any one of these could be the problem. After he got home with no puking incident (of course, nothing was left in his stomach, but), she recommended that we give him his evening dose of medicine and see what happened.

What happened was, he puked in bed at 12:30am. Commence heroic Daddy again, cleaning up the sheets and starting to wash every lovie in Munch's crib. This time, though, Mommy didn't freeze and I washed poor again shaking Munch in the bath and then cuddled the poor thing to sleep.

So, not carsick. But, still could have been medicine. Or, could have been bug. We skipped 2 days of medicine and didn't give Munch any dairy on Sunday. We had no further puke incidents. Hubs and I both felt a bit off, but neither of us had incidents either.

So, the question of bug or medicine remains. And, he's back on the medicine and we're going on a car trip this weekend, so we should find that out in a few days.

Not fun, but yet another parental milestone dealt with--the dreaded car puke. We survived. And the car is being detailed as we speak.