Giving Birth, Chapter 6

The days that followed were somewhat chaotic, punctuated by visits to the special care nursery.  I was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday, and our doctor told us she believed little Wooble would be able to go home the next day.  Unfortunately, when we went to visit him later that afternoon, we discovered that the issues he'd been having were more serious than they'd thought.  Overall, he was doing very well.  He ate voraciously, slept deeply, and launched poop at the various nurses who tried to change him.  However, his breathing wasn't as good as it should have been.  He had episodes where he would forget to breathe, which would in turn affect his heart rate.  The nature of these episodes was such that he needed to be monitored for seven days without a recurrence before they would let him go home. 

Thus began our daily trek to the hospital.  For awhile, while my mom was here and we had a babysitter, we were able to visit him together.  Then my mom went home, and Hubby had to go back to work, and so we would meet at the hospital on his lunch break and take turns.  One would stay with the Schprid while the other would go in, say hi to Wooble, and check on his progress.

For a few days, they had him on an oxygen tube.  He didn't need "oxygen," per se, but it did help him to have the air slightly more available to him than it otherwise would have been.  That only lasted a couple of days.  Then his bilirubin levels went too high, and we walked into the nursery to discover that his bed had been upgraded to a lidded variety and he had a constant light shining on him.  To protect his eyes, they'd given him a purple mask that velcroed on.  The tabs from the velcro stuck straight out from his face, and the overall look gave the impression of a martian baby.  It wasn't serious; he got over the jaundice before I got over the shock of seeing him like that enough to bring in my camera and take a picture. 

At one point, one of the nurse practitioners came to talk to us.  She said that he wasn't responding quite as well as they would have hoped to some of their treatments.  In fact, they'd start treating one thing, and another little issue would come up.  Nothing was terribly serious, but the overall effect was worrisome.  They needed to run the full gamut of tests, including taking spinal fluid, inserting a catheter, and doing brain scans.  That was a hard day.  Wooble and I both shed some tears, and Hubby valiantly tried to distract us both. 

Fortunately, the tests they ran came back showing that everything was normal.  No swelling in his brain, no infections.  Of course, that wasn't quite enough to really reassure them, and so they also started him on a complete regimen of antibiotics.  At first they were able to administer the antibiotics through the IV on his hand, but eventually that went bad and they had to put one in his head.  Apparently it's better for babies, but it sure looked awful.  That one went bad, as well, and they inserted another one a few days later.  I'm glad I wasn't there for either of those procedures.

Finally, one day we came in to find that he looked almost like a normal baby.  They'd taken the tube out of his head, his jaundice had cleared up, and the only monitors they still had on him connected to his foot.  And, they just wrapped around his foot, rather than being anything intrusive.  A few days later, two weeks after he was born, we were able to bring him home and be a family.