July 20th, 2006Eight Days a Week
That’s what this week felt like. One week ago today, I was at the hospital, about to be induced (for the second time, the story of which will come soon, I’m sure). And today, we were just re-released from the hospital, where we were admitted for the second time on Tuesday, when Matthew’s bilirubin levels were elevated to the point of needing immediate phototherapy. Tuesday, after his first pediatrician’s visit, the doctor called and said that he needed to be admitted to the pediatric unit to receive phototherapy - a weird blue light over an isolette.
We woke him up every two hours to breastfeed, to some latter success as we went along; my milk finally came in as we were at the hospital, so his weight went up from 7lb 10oz on Tuesday to 8lb 3oz today.
So many parents go through so much more crap than we went through with premature babies, so a part of me feels awfully silly about moaning about it. It’s tough, seeing your new baby alone, with a set of “sunglasses” velcroed to his face, in a glowing box. Every time we had to take him out to breastfeed, we had to remove this glowing blanket and arrange him just so. At 2AM the first night we were there, the nurse and doctor asked me to pump breastmilk and feed it to him in a bottle. The first time I pumped from one breast, I got what seemed to me to be a pitiful amount, considering how very much Matthew needed to gain weight, and when he ate it all really quickly, I cried because I wasn’t able to nourish him appropriately.
I cried a lot - partly due to post-partum emotions in flux, I’m sure, and partly because even though it’s a common issue for babies to have, it’s hard not to let those “what if”’s into play - What if I didn’t have diabetes, would this have made a difference for Matthew’s bilirubin levels? What if this, what if that, why didn’t the pediatrician on-call do something about this sooner, etc. ad nauseam. And the biggest reason - that’s my son underneath those lights, not in my arms. I don’t care if this has happened to 90% of the world’s population before, this is happening right now to my baby boy, and I don’t like it one little bit.
Yeah, talk about your hormonal fluctuations. Anyway, we’re home, he’s fine, and now we really can rock the whole building a family and a life together thing. Thank goodness.
July 20th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
I’m glad you’re all home and I hope things go well from here on out.
You know, I wrote something similar when Hayley had to have her second eye surgery - compared to other kids who are really sick or have birth defects, etc, it’s not a big deal. Except that it is because it’s our kids, you know? It’s ALWAYS a big deal when it’s your kid.
July 22nd, 2006 at 4:08 pm
Almost the exact same thing happened to Eleanora. Her bili levels were high in the hospital, and they kept her for a few days in the lights, then after they sent us home the levels got even higher and we had to go back in. For some reason, though, we were in the pediatric ICU so my dominant emotion while we were there was guilt that we had this beautiful (almost 100%) healthy baby, complete with friends and family dropping by to congratulate us and we were surrounded by people whose children were genuinely sick.
At the same time, I remember at one point in the early trips back and forth to the hospital before she was re-admitted when we both just broke down and sobbed for a good long while.