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!

The "lost 24" hours....part 1

The last day or so have been completely crazy but I am trying to write down what is happening since I can tell I am already forgetting things!

We did some "recovering" in the labor and delivery room and I started trying to breast feed. The nurse was helpful, but I never really got Henry to latch on or do any good sucking. We were moved to a room on the 13th floor and my new nurse was really helpful. She and I managed to get Henry latched and sucking on my right breast (now to be know as the "good breast" or GB), although I don't know that he got much. At our next feeding, at 8:00pm, we had less success:( As it turns out, my nipples are pretty flat and hard to latch onto. The nurse gave me some "soft shells" to try to get my nipples to pull out more and I started wearing them. I was not stressed though, I figured this happens to lots of people and that I could get a lactation consultant to come in the morning to help me out. Everyone says how hard this is, we just had to make it through the night. Unfortunately, the 10:00pm feeding did not go much better. The nurses took Henry off for a glucose check and told me that he was low (in the 40's). At about midnight, we were given a bottle and told that Henry's sugar was still to low and he needed to eat about an ounce/30ml and they would check him again. He needed to be in the 50's or they would call the NICU.

At 2:00am, his sugar was still not up. He had eaten a decent amount from the bottle, but I think he had ended up urpping most of it up (tiny stomach, first food). The nurse told me we could give it one more try and I went with her to the nursery and we got about 15ml of formula in him. He was just tired and not interested at that point. I left him in the nursery so they could check his sugar in an hour and went back to bed. Unfortunately, Allan had completely hit the wall at about midnight and while I could wake him up, I decided not to since he was so out of it when he was awake. At 3:00am, the nurse came and told me that his sugar was still not up, and was actually dropping. He was being taken downstairs to the NICU. :( I woke Allan up so we could both kiss Henry goodbye. It was really hard. Henry was awake with both eyes were open for the first time (that I had seen). After he was gone, I made Allan get in the hospital bed and cuddle with me. I am surprised it did not collapse under our combined weight.

I had been told to give the NICU nurse about an hour to get him checked in and settled down. I called down at about 4:00am and was told that Henry had eaten about 15ml and was sleeping. They were going to feed him every three hours, so his next feeding was at 7:00am. I was told that I could come down anytime, but that he was sleeping and the best thing would be for me to sleep as well and come down at about 6:30am so that we could get introduced to the NICU and be ready to go for the 7:00am feeding.