BLACK poop = ER

The last 36 hours have been a little rough for all 3 of us!

Ella has been waking up crying (as if she is in pain) the last 2 nights. She cries even when I rock her and she finally falls asleep once she makes herself so tired so just passes out... then she wakes up and does it all over again-- NOT FUN! Plus I feel bad for her because there is only so much I can do. She use to be go good at going to sleep but lately we have had a very rough patch.

Yesterday morning after we hadn't slept a ton I woke up to Ella screaming bloody murder, not crying as if I WANT UP or OUT OF THIS CRIB. So I picked her up and fed her as usual. Then like every morning I changed her, but this time it was a little different, actually ALOT different... I opened up her diaper and BAM all I saw was....

... BLACK POOP and we are not talking just a little here, the entire diaper was full of it!!

It scared the crap out of me because all I could think of was the conversation our pediatrician had with me, "Her poop will be ALL different colors: green, purple, yellow.... all those are okay EXCEPT for BLACK. Black poop is not okay!!" This kept repeating in my head. Black poop can mean BLOOD :(

So of course I course I called the ACUTE URGENT CARE on base that I assumed we would go to and the lady told me I needed to take her to the Emergency Room.... Boy did that just take it to a different level! I was of course freaking out because I was home alone while Tobin was in his SIM with the car (I had no car to even take her to the ER). I thankfully got a hold of him and he was home in 20 minutes. We packed Ella up into the car and headed to the ER.

After about 4 hours of waiting in the waiting room to see a doc (THEY WERE SLAMMED) we finally got Ella in. Of course she did not think fondly of the doctors who were putting things up her bum to take her temperature and then again to get a sample to test for indication of blood. For the most part she was pretty happy otherwise, especially considering the circumstances, nothing like hanging out in the ER for an entire day without being able to take a real nap (dosing off our my chest for short periods of time just doesn't cut it).

After being there for more then 6 hours we were told we could go and that they aren't sure why she had black stool but from what they could see there wasn't any indication of blood and if it happens again to come right back! No blood was a good thing to hear but not knowing why just bugs me and makes me worry about her. I would only assume that is normal as a parent though. The doctor did say if it was blood they would be worried about a tear somewhere in there or a stomach ulcer (which is not likely for that young of a baby).

Thank goodness Ella is OK! I would really rather not have to go back to the ER ever again :) It just scares the crap out of you especially when you have the worst thoughts possible going through your head. I'm just glad we went in and everything checked out OK.

Once we got home Ella was so exhausted she couldn't do anything but scream and finally fell asleep (on my chest, the crib wasn't doing it for her). And like the night before once she went to bed later that night she kept waking up screaming and finally would fall back asleep and then do it all over again :(

Boy, I am exhausted...