The Nicu nurse practicioner came to us to examine Kyleigh. She appeared healthy and with no cause for concern other than what they'd already seen. They decided to run x rays and remove some of her belly contents to send off to the lab. The lab results would be at least 24 hours, but the x rays were pretty much immediate. She left and shortly after returned with the neonatologist, who we had with Micah, but didn't remember us right away. They explained that the x ray showed pneumatosis. (We weren't at all familiar with this diagnosis...) They explained that the the bowel was likely infected and the lining had cysts in the wall. This however, had nothing to do with the vomiting blood. However, she didn't appear sick, and that infants with pneumatosis typically appear very ill... They also explained that in this neonatologists 12 years of practice, he'd almost never seen a full term infant with this condition. Things really didn't add up. The protocol for the pneumatosis was 7 days of no food and antibiotics, and obviously she needed to go to the Nicu right away.
And I LOST it.
I almost never lose it. Sometimes with medical things I get visibly frustrated or a little teary eyed, but I hadn't lost it since they day Micah was born, when they told me they had to send me to a different hospital after he was born, and that I wouldn't get to see him for at least a day. (That was not the plan).
Poor doctor, LOL.. I sobbed and sobbed and tried to spit out that we'd been through this all before and this was my HEALTHY baby... that i had one already one with a feeding tube... (of course there was a big logical gap between where she was and a feeding tube, but no one was going to try to reason with me.)
They gave us about a half an hour or an hour with her before they whisked her away. My recovery time was over, all 24 hours of it. That beat Micah's 18 hours i was separated from him. You don't realize how nice it is to lay in bed and have your baby handed to you... to pass the baby around with family (and we were glad we'd had a lot of people in the day before).... that was over now.
They put a huge tube in her nose (a 10 fr!) to drain the contents of her stomach, since they were still having blood coming out (and it came out for a few days). Blood in the tummy is extremely irritating and they wanted to stop her vomiting. At that point she wasn't totally miserable because of no food, since newborns belly's are the size of a marble and they don't really need anything for the first day or two. She was on i.v. fluids, basically sugar water, so she'd feel more stable and get needed fluids.
We all filed through to see her, and i came and went from the OB floor to the Nicu... They were MUCH closer than Cincy which was nice. What wasn't nice was having to walk past the newborn nursery everytime I went to my room... And hearing the babies crying throughout the night, only to realize it wasn't yours. It was miserable. My OB stopped by that afternoon and caught me in my room... unfortunately she was totally oblivious to what was going on. This poor lady had no idea... She tried SO darn hard for this to all go smoothly, to treat the pregnancy as normal as possible... the whole bit. Of course, i didn't keep it together trying to explain it to her either. She was so sweet and supportive, and reassured me she was in good hands. My delivery nurse stopped by to offer a hug, as did Micah's speech therapist. (who also had no idea what had gone on, poor lady too!)
(Had to change this to the next twelve hours, not up for explaining the next twelve yet... Maybe another day...)
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