Perspective

Yesterday at baby class Christine, our facilitator, asked how many teachers were in the room. A good bunch of us raised our hands. Many of the mamas will be going back to school next week, and will be leaving their babies. Of course, it's causing a lot of anxiety.

Then Christine said, "Now you understand why moms cry on the first day of school, huh? That mom that drives you crazy, sending multiple emails a day? I bet you can relate to her now. "

I may not be going back to my classroom on Monday, but boy did what she say hit home. I think I was a good teacher before, but I think I'll be an even better one when I go back, now that I am Ruby's mom.

Yesterday I also had to go to school and pack up my belongings that had been left in my classroom. It was hard, and it made me sad. But both experiences made me so grateful to be able to stay home this year with my girl. I know it will be all too soon that I am the mom sending the emails.

Back to the Hospital (and more lessons on mommy-instinct).

We were discharged from the hospital on Saturday afternoon.  That day, we came home, put Ruby into her first cloth diaper (yay!), loved on her, and fed her constantly.  My poor, poor nipples.  But that's another story.  =)

That first night was SO HARD.  They don't prepare you for this, but Ruby cried inconsolably the whole night long, unless she was eating.  We were at our wits end.  We ended up doing the very last thing I'd ever considered a possibility in our family: sleeping with her in our bed.  But, ahhhhh, peace!

I didn't mention this before, but while at the hospital, they did a routine bilirubin check on her.  It was borderline high, so they did a blood test.  She was still at the high end, but she passed the test.  On Sunday at home, I thought she kind of looked yellow.  Keith kind of thought so, but we weren't really sure.

All of her clothes were too big.  She was only 6lbs. when we were discharged.

Maybe we should have called the pediatrician.  But we didn't know!  And we didn't know what we didn't know.  Besides, we had an appointment the next day for our post-partum check up.  She seemed fine, so we figured that was the place to ask.

Totally unrelated, but a funny story, my aforementioned nipples were dying.  Girl likes to nurse, and my milk hadn't come in yet, so she was eating all. the. time.  I'd heard of these gel pads, called Soothies, so in desperation, I sent Keith out to get some.  He sent me a frantic text saying, "Target is all out!!!  They don't even have any in the back, what do I do?!?!"  It was pretty funny.  And don't worry, he found some, thank goodness!

Anyway, Monday my milk came in and life got a lot easier!  A full, well-fed baby is a happy baby.  I got Ruby dressed in a cute outfit, and off we went to the hospital for our post-partum check up at 3:30.

The nurse started by doing a scan to check her bilirubin.  The scanner kept getting an error.  She decided we'd weigh her and try again in a bit.  Ruby was put on the scale, and she was down to 5lbs.11oz.  The nurse wasn't too happy about that.  She started talking about supplementing and formula... two things I didn't want to hear.  Especially since things seemed to be going well now that my milk was in.  The nurse gave me two bottles of formula and some tubing for a possible supplemental nursing system, because I did not want to do bottles yet.  She also wanted to do a weighed feed, so I sat in the nursing chair and fed my girl.  

While Ruby was eating, the nurse stepped out to see if she could get a different bili scanner.  I was fighting tears due to a combination of post-partum hormones, and feeling like a breastfeeding failure.  The nurse came back in with another, more experienced nurse (from the get-go, I'd kind of felt like our nurse didn't know what she was doing).  They scanned Ruby once, while looking at how yellow she was.  The other nurse proclaimed that the error code the scanner was giving, was an error because her bilirubin was too high for the machine to read.  Crap.

At this point, they called our pediatrician.  Of course, since Ruby was only 3 days old, we hadn't even had our first appointment yet with the pedi.  So the nurses came to get Keith to give the pedis all our info.  Apparently, the plan was that Ruby would need to go upstairs to the lab to get blood drawn to see what her bili level was, and then we needed to go to the pediatrician so that they could decide how they wanted to treat her. =(  Of course, we'd been assigned the last appointment of the day at the post-partum center, so all of this was done in a big rush.  I was struggling to keep it together.

The good news was, Ruby gained two ounces in just that one feed.  So the nurse proclaimed that we did NOT need to supplement until further notice.  We never have had to, so take that, nurse.

We left, rushed upstairs to a horrifying blood draw (they didn't properly warm her foot, even though I told them it wasn't working, so they had to squeeze the hell out of her to get the blood out, and it was totally awful).  Then we rushed off to the Redmond office of the pedis, because that was the only one that had an appointment for us (5:50pm, the last one of the day).

We got there, met a really nice doctor, and she checked Ruby out.  She said looking at her, she was pretty jaundiced, but the lab hadn't called back with the results.  She told us she was pretty certain Ruby would need treatment.  It would either be bili blankets at home, or she'd have to be hospitalized.  My heart kind of stopped at that.  My new baby might have to be hospitalized already?

The doctor's office was closing for the day, so the doctor sent us off, and told us the on-call night doc would let us know what to do once the lab results were in.  We were still on the way home when we got the call.  Ruby was going back to the hospital.  Her bilirubin level was 21.  Too high for the at-home blankets.  The doctor told us to go home, pack some things, and they'd be waiting for us on the 4th floor at Evergreen.  I hung up and cried.

We did as the doctor told us, but had to make arrangements for Braidy too.  We didn't end up back at the hospital until 9:00pm, but sure enough, they were waiting for us.  

Ruby went right under the bili lights.  

She didn't like it, she wasn't being held!  She cried a lot.  The nurse suggested a pacifier, which I did not want to introduced until at least 3 weeks old when we were into our breastfeeding groove.  Keith was all for it, and the nurse told me to not look at it as a long term thing, but something to get through the next 24 hours.

I'd be lying if I didn't say I wasn't a little bit happy that she spit it out more often than not, but it did help her a little bit.  The other issue I ran into was feeding.  Ruby was only allowed to be out from under the bili lights for 30min every 2 hours.  If she got hungry in between, I wouldn't be able to take her out and nurse her.  The nurse set me up with a pump when I said no formula, and said if I got enough milk, we could go that route.  I didn't want bottles either, so the nurse taught us how to finger feed her with tubing and a syringe.  So it went, every 2 hours around the clock, I'd take her out and we'd weigh her, then feed her for 30min, weigh her again, put her back in, pump, soak the pump parts in my little dishwashing tub, finger-feed her (because she'd always take it, and then be full until next time), clean my pump parts, and then maybe rest until the next time.

The doctors we had there were really great.  After the first night, her levels had gone down, but not enough.  They were also really concerned with how much milk she was getting (because it flushes out the bilirubin), so we were doing weighed feeds around the clock.  Luckily, I had good milk, and she was gaining nicely.  But since her levels weren't as low as they wanted, we ended up having to stay two nights.  

We were finally discharged.  The past two days had been really hard for this first time mom.  Luckily, we'd had great nurses and doctors, and beds to sleep in in Ruby's room.  I never left her for a minute.  We were sent home with instructions to follow up with our pedi for more bili checks.  After about a week of every other day blood draws, Ruby was proclaimed in good health.  Phew.

On the way home from the hospital.  It kills me that she's already outgrown that sleeper she's wearing, and it's too big for her in this picture.

This was the second time in her first week that I wished I'd trusted my instincts.  I knew she looked yellow.  If we had called the pedi, maybe her levels wouldn't have gotten so high?  I guess we'll never know.  But I do know, from now on, when I have a feeling about something, I need to act on it so I'm not kicking myself later.

Ruby's First Day (and a lesson about trusting your Mommy-instinct)

After Ruby was born, it seemed like our family arrived almost immediately.  Like, they came in as Keith was still giving her a bath.  I found out later that he'd told our parents right away when she was born, so they all just came over to the hospital.  That was ok, but I wouldn't have minded a little more quiet bonding time.

The on-call pediatrician from our practice came to check her out, and said that everything looked and sounded great.  So we kicked back, held our baby girl, and ate pastries that my dad had brought from the French bakery.  Yum.

There was a shift change for the nurses.  In walked a woman that seemed so familiar to me.  Our previous nurse introduced her as "Jennie".  Then it hit me.  I said, "Are you Jennie Turner?"  She said she was.  I told her, "I used to babysit your children!" and told her what my maiden name was.  She remembered, and we laughed at the coincidence.  An exceptional coincidence, because that doctor I'd recognized the night before while we were walking the halls?  Yeah, that's her husband!  We told her about how we'd seen him too, and couldn't believe what a small world it was.  Jennie was a great nurse, and really good with breastfeeding/latching help.  She also brought be some Medela lanolin, which I was really thankful for, because it was much nicer/easier to put on than the Lansinoh I had.

A short while later, a woman with a big machine wheeled into our room.  She introduced herself, and said she was there to do the baby's echocardiogram.

What???

Obviously we were all kind of shocked, and told her that we knew nothing about this.  In turn, she was shocked.  She told us that usually the families were expecting her, and that the doctor had heard a heart-murmur, so she ordered the echo.

WHAT???

We explained that the pedi had told us everything sounded good, and was she sure she had the right baby?  She looked down at the chart, must've read the name in her head, because then she started spelling our complicated last name out loud.  Yep.  Right baby.  Our name is impossible to confuse with any other.  It felt so wrong and weird, but I mean, she had OUR chart.  It couldn't be a mistake then, could it?

She wheeled the machine and Ruby's bassinet over together and started the ultrasound of her heart.  Ruby had had SO many ultrasounds at Maternal Fetal Medicine, including a fetal echo, that I still just couldn't believe she needed this.  Ruby didn't really love the procedure, she kept scooting herself across the bassinet.  We thought it was pretty funny that she was so mobile.  My mom kept scooting her back.  The sonographer didn't seem like anything was out of the ordinary when doing the test, other than that we hadn't known about it.  The whole 30min she was there, we kept talking about how strange it all was.  Finally, she was done, and left.

Nurse Jennie came back in to check on us, and we mentioned what had just happened.  She was very suspicious also.  She wanted to find out more.  Pretty soon after that, though, her shift was over.  Guess who was our nurse now?  Australian Nurse Jenny!  She was back, and very excited to meet Ruby.  Nurse Natalie wasn't with her, but she actually came back to meet her too, and congratulate us.  Anyway, as with any shift change, Nurse Jennie filled in Nurse Jenny (ha!) on how things were going.  She also told her about the echo.

When Jenny had a moment, she came to talk to us about what had happened.  She was pretty mad.  That kind of thing shouldn't be sprung on brand-new parents.  She also vowed to find out what had happened.  My mom had gone out to get something (I actually have no idea what...), and when she came back in, she told us that she'd overheard Nurse Jenny having a heated conversation on the phone.  It turned out my mommy-instincts were right.  Ruby wasn't supposed to have the echo.  The pediatrician had ordered it for the WRONG BABY.

What the hell?  Seriously?  How does that even happen?  Also, we were hoping that the baby that needed the echo got it!  Nurse Jenny was heated, telling whomever she'd been talking to that we should not have to pay for that test (no kidding).  She told us she'd been working on it, and would keep us in the know.

Later in the afternoon, the phone rang in my room.  It was the pediatrician.  Instead of apologizing, she launched into this story about how the sonographer should have done something when we were suspicious, and that she "wasn't trying to make excuses" but it was really busy and there were a lot of babies, blah blah.  No apology still.

Then she goes on to tell me, that she'd been talking with the charge nurse, and the sonographer had actually seen something during the echo, and so she recommended I have the test sent on to Children's to be read by the radiologist.

What???

I asked her what the sonographer had seen.  She wouldn't tell me!  She said that the techs are not supposed to "read" the scans, and she'd only gotten the information second hand from the charge nurse, so she couldn't tell me.  I told her that I would need to know what was seen on that scan, before I would consent to having this (very expensive!) test completed.  She told me ok, that they'd hang onto it until tomorrow.  If the discharge pedi heard anything when she came to examine Ruby, they'd send it on.  Then she finally gave me an incredibly half-hearted, not really believable apology and hung up.

I filled everybody in on what she'd said, and Nurse Jenny was still mad on our behalf, and went to go talk to the charge nurse.  The nurse came and talked to us, and I think still wanted to send the scan (I'm having trouble remembering now).

The next day, the new on-call pediatrician (who was much nicer than the one before!) came to check Ruby out for discharge.  She said all was great.  I'd assumed that since all was well, they wouldn't even think of sending the scan on to Children's.  But they did anyway (I think they had the day before, but I'm not sure).  Everything turned out to be fine, and the hospital assured us, and has since assured us many times, that we will not be billed for the echo.

In the end, Ruby was fine.  The procedure didn't hurt her in any way.  But I look back on that experience, and really wish that I had trusted my mommy-instincts.  I immediately felt that something wasn't right when the sonographer came in.  In hindsight, I should have insisted we confirm with the pediatrician that the scan was necessary.  I guess the thing about parenting is, you're always going to question your choices.  I just wish I had trusted myself, and now I know I need to.

After all that mess was taken care of, it was all about wrapping up our hospital stay.  We were sent to a baby-care class that morning (which was mostly about breastfeeding, which I thought was cool).  Keith's friends Jesse & Heather came to visit us.  I put on real clothes for the first time in two days, and we packed up our enormous amount of stuff we had there.  Note to self: for the next baby, pack light!  We hardly used anything we'd brought.  Oh well.

Finally, it was time to go home.  They were actually letting us leave with a baby!!!  We got our girl all dressed, and the nurse helped us put her in her car seat.  Once they removed the baby lo-jack, we were good to go.  Leaving the hospital was emotional for me.  Actually, just typing it out is making me tear up seven weeks later.  But I knew what a momentous thing it was that our girl was born.  We were leaving the place where our first baby came into the world, and we'd never have that experience again.

But...  This is what we get to experience now. =)