The "lost 24" hours, part 2.

After Henry was taken to NICU, I tried to get some sleep. Unfortunately, I was not able to settle down until after 4am. At 5:45 my OB came in to check on me. (talk about early rounds!). At 6:00, I took a shower - my first since Tuesday morning and we headed out at 6:30ish. Allan was actually off to a 7:10am Dr's appointment. We had been trying to get him in before the end of the year (and deductibles reset) and decided that he should just go. I headed to NICU.

I met an NICU nurse who was so nice and got me oriented towards the NICU. I had not been in an NICU since I worked at Rush over 10 years ago. There were "pods" and within a "pod" were six small rooms. It was like he had his own private room and we had privacy while we were with him. The good news was that she had gotten Henry to eat about 15ml, the bad news was that his sugar was still not anywhere near good. We decided (and agreed) that although breast feeding is important, getting good nutrition in Henry and his sugars up (so he could get out of NICU and come home) was the priority. I was able to feed him a bottle and he ate almost 2oz! I was thrilled to see him eat and felt that we were on the right track. I stayed for about 1hr 15 minutes and then headed back upstairs to try to go to sleep.

Honestly, at that point, I hit the wall. Allan got back to the hospital at about 9ish and had doughnuts from the Doughnut Vault! Yum! Having a donut made my day. I was so thankful that he had also run out the night before for Chick Fil-A since getting food became problematic. You needed to "order" it and it then took an hour to arrive. The problem was that you needed to be in your room and we were bouncing back and forth between NICU. We eventually found our system, but I did not eat all that much for Wednesday or Thursday.


While I hit the wall that morning, Allan was a champ. A lot of Thursday is sort of foggy for me. We went down to NICU for each feeding and the nurses were fabulous! The nurse that came in at 8:00am was also a lactation counselor (a step down from lactation consultant) and was a HUGE help in getting Henry to latch on with nipple shields and I felt like we were making progress. I would (attempt) to feed Henry for 10 minutes (we did not want him tired), and then would pump while Allan fed him a bottle. Honestly, it was wonderful that Allan could also be so involved in the process and get bonding time with Henry. The nurses were AMAZING with teaching us not only breastfeeding, but how to take a temperature, correctly diaper, hold the baby, etc. The bummer was that they had to constantly prick his heel for the sugar readings.

Our routine was as follows: Henry ate every three hours: 30 minutes before Henry was scheduled to eat, I would get up, go to the bathroom, etc. We would then leave to get to NICU and make sure we were there about 10 minutes before feeding time. We would change his diaper, take his temp, and the nurse would check his blood sugar. I would BF for 10 minutes, Allan would feed him his bottle while I pumped, one of use would cuddle/kangaroo with him, we would leave and get back to to the room with about 1hr 45min till we needed to get back down there.

By Thursday afternoon, we had our first "good" sugar reading (above 65). We kept at it and they started weaning him off the glucose IV on Friday at 1:00. I was discharged late on Friday night (11:15pm) and we were back on Saturday morning. We were discharged and took Henry home yesterday (Friday) at 2:00pm.


We are so thrilled to be home, but I still feel like 3:00am Thursday morning to midnight Friday were just lost. I am so happy to have a happy ending and have a healthy baby at home. I guess this scare made me appreciate him all the more!