Hospital Stay

Well, we've been home for a week and I've been thinking about writing this but every time I sit down to do so, something else comes up. So here we go....

After delivery, I stayed in the recovery room for a while hooked up to monitors and a morphine pump (yay!) That night is sort of a blur of drugs, nurses and sleep. We ended up sending Patrick to the nursery for a few hours around midnight but he came back around 3 to be fed. Wednesday I was able to get the IV taken out, get rid of the morphine and the catheter. It felt good to be unattached. We hung out with Patrick all day and introduced him to all our visitors. My parents, friends, coworkers, Dean's mom and aunt. It was a pretty good day. He ate pretty well and seemed content. He went to get his circumcision in the afternoon and was pretty fussy after that (wouldn't you be??) Wednesday night the nurse noticed he was breathing quite fast. We thought it looked about the same as before and no one mentioned it, but she wanted to get it checked out. So she called the resident pediatrician on call and he came down to look at him. The decided not to do any blood work because of the circ. It would show inflammation for sure. They were worried about some kind of inflammation/infection in the lungs. Overall it was a rough evening, he didn't want to eat and obviously didn't feel good. Thursday went pretty well. We didn't have any visitors until late in the day. Which was nice. We could just be together as a family. Then Thursday night the same night nurse was on and was still concerned about his breathing (odd to me how none of the day nurses seemed concerned). She was taking him to the nursery with Dean to weigh him and somehow they got talking about the delivery, breaking my water and the nurse saying it was tinged. She checked the chart and there was nothing listed about it. So she called the resident pedi again and they ordered blood work and an x-ray to rule out any kind of lung infection. The x-ray was 'inconclusive' and the blood work came back with elevated levels of inflammation (at 4.9 which is about 8 times the normal .6) So between 2 resident pediatricians and 2 nurses, they decided he needed to go to the NICU and have antibiotics administered through an IV. Of course I was scared and wasn't ready to let them take my baby. They gave us a few minutes and we sat together and cried. I've never seen my husband cry, and it was the saddest thing I've ever seen. We were both scared and felt quite alone. We went with him to the 4th floor and the nurses there were wonderful. He had a room and they got right to work on the IV. They got it in his arm on the first try and he promptly pulled it out. So they tried again, no luck. Tried the other arm, no luck. At this point he was screaming. No amount of sweeties (sugar water) or pacifier was going to calm him down. He was NOT a happy boy. By this time it was well after midnight. I was exhausted and still quite sore. And seeing my poor baby being poked and held down was too much. I couldn't watch anymore and stepped outside to cry in the hallway. Dean stepped up and tried to calm him but at this point it wasn't working. Finally by about 3am they got it in his little head. After a few minutes with him cuddling and getting him to sleep, we went back to our room. A short few hours later we were up, showered and back with him. Not much you can do when your baby is hooked up to all those cords. Later that day they needed the room for an emergency and moved him to the step down nursery. Which is a good thing. It's for those babies who are healthier and probably on their way home soon. We were still waiting for the blood cultures to come back to show any growth. So in the meantime we just hung out with him and did the best we could to comfort and feed him. Feeding didn't go so well. He didn't want to eat, cried a lot and was basically miserable. I didn't know what to do. The nurses were telling me to just keep feeding him and the lactation ladies were telling me that he was doing great...apparently they missed the screaming fit earlier! So after a VERY emotional day, we decided to call it a night. I think I cried more that day than I had in a very long time!! My doctor actually let me stay in the hospital an extra night so we could be closer to him. Saturday was another day of hanging out in his NICU room. We had a different nurse who was much more helpful. They were all nice, but she really helped me understand more about the feedings, taught us a few things (how to take his temperature, use the bulb syringe etc). So that made us feel better. I got discharged around 3 or 4 and we went back to Patricks room to wait for the doctor. They didn't really know much more, still waiting for the 48 hour blood culture (although the 24 hour showed no growth). We headed home for the first time in 5 days without our new baby. It was sad, scary and not how I expected. We got some sleep and headed back up the hospital around 10. His CRP blood work showed the inflammation had gone down, so that was good. Still waiting on the culture. The doctor came in around noon and said he could go home. He said there was no way to tell whether the CRP was showing inflammation from the circ, from infection, from the bellybutton, who knows. They also didn't know if the antibiotics were what brought the numbers down or if they were just coming down on their own. So we watched a few movies on safety, RSV, car seats and shaken baby, gave him a bath, learned a few other things and by about 4 we were ready to go. We packed him up in his little car seat and headed out as a family. A very happy little family!! Finally home, all together....not sure what to do next!!!

It was a very scary few days. Not knowing what was happening or why. But we feel like we got excellent care. And we learned a lot. The additional learning has helped a ton since being home. We weren't scared to give him his first bath, weren't scared to change his diaper, get him dressed, anything. The NICU nurses showed us everything! So even though it was scary for us, being part time parents for a few days really helped us transition into being full time parents. And now, he's growing, eating like a champ and overall a happy baby!! I'm glad this is behind us, but I'm sure I have plenty of years to worry about the little guy!