Skip to main content

3 months of being a mom to a high needs baby pt.2

  A week after discharge from the hospital, we took Christian back to the Dr, and he was gaining weight, but still spitting up almost every feed. She told me to feed him 1 oz every hour if that's what it took to get him to keep it down.
for a week I fed him 1 oz every hour.
this meant I got no sleep for an entire week. I was exhausted and trying to keep everything around the house going as my husband worked and my big boys still needed me for everything.
2 weeks after discharge I took Christian in for a weight check and he was back to loosing weight and was extremely dehydrated again, and I was told to take him back to the ER to be evaluated for failure to thrive.
Those words "failure to thrive" cut deeper than anything I had ever heard. This time Kody needed to stay with the big boys, and couldn't miss any more work, so I asked my grandma to take me and the baby to the hospital.
After an agonizing 6 hours in the ER waiting room at nortons, and then another 4 hours in the triage room my sister came to sit with us, and my grandma left. 4 more hours later they decided to admit Christian to the hospital, and my sister went home.
This time I was by myself with my little tiny guy. We got settled in and for the first night in weeks, I slept for 5 hours in a row while  a wonderful nurse took care of Christian for me, doing his feeds, and changes and keeping a watchful eye on his monitors.
When the pediatric team came in the next morning, the look on the attending doctors face is one I will never forget, she was worried for his life.
After a thorough assessment she decided to put Christian on meds for acid reflux, and change his formula to a hypoallergenic one.
The next day, he had lost more weight  they decided to up his feeds to 3 oz every 3 hours and put him on a high calorie formula. They ordered a swallow study, and a lot of blood work.
Kody came back up the next evening (Saturday) to be with us.
Sunday I left his side for the first time ever to go to my aunts house (she lived in the same city) to take a real shower. and to go to the store to get Christian some more pacifiers (we dropped 2 of his in the ER floor )  while I was gone Christian projectile vomited and became extremely lethargic. I got that phone call as I was walking into Kroger and broke down in tears as my aunt held me in a tight hug in the middle of Kroger.
That night kody had to go home so he could go to work the next day, I cried myself to sleep that night as I felt the most alone I had ever felt.
The next day people from our congregation as well as people from other congregations came and visited with me, sharing scriptures and prayer with me, and Christian started to gain weight.
After 6 days in the hospital Christian was able to come home under close weight monitoring from his doctor.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New things

My first baby is going to kindergarten in a week. My sweet innocent baby boy starting his first adventure without me in the midst of a global pandemic.  Next week I will drop him off in front of his school and leave him all alone with his classmates and teachers. Next week I will trust that he is being loved and cared for by a woman I don’t know. Next week I will trust that I will see my sweet smiling boy walk out of his new school with a look of accomplishment and relief as he runs in to my arms at exactly 2:19. The beginning will be tough, he will cry. I will cry. I’ll count the minutes until I can wrap my arms around him again.  He is ready. He loves his Minecraft backpack, lunchbox, water bottle combo.  He talks about the friends he will meet and the things he will play with.  My mind runs constantly trying to remember to do all the things to try to prepare him for the big day. Will he be afraid? He won’t have my hand to hold if he is.  Will he remember to u...
Post a Comment
Read more

You're gonna be fine

Was it when they said you were transverse breech? Was it when I heard the doctor ask for the vacuum assist as you were being delivered? Was it when you started projectile vomiting every feed? Was it when you weighed an ounce less at one month than you did at birth? Was it when you had the ultrasound for pyloric stenosis and it was positive? Was it when they took you out of my arms to do surgery on you at 4 weeks old? Was it when the surgeon said "I made a mistake"? Was it when the radiologist said you weren't ready to eat after it had already been 4 days?  Was it when you were discharged, but still vomiting? Was it when I took you for a weight check and they sent you back to the hospital? Was it when they said the words 'failure to thrive'? Was it when you were still losing weight? Was it when you were diagnosed with severe reflux? Was it when you started to gain some grams slowly? Was it when you couldn't climb over the 1st percentile for weight? Was it when ...
Post a Comment
Read more

3 months of being a mom to a high needs baby pt.1

  When I gave birth to my 3rd child, I thought for sure he would be the easiest of all.I know what im doing by now, after all. I WAS WRONG Christian is a high needs baby, a high risk baby. but what does that mean? He doesn't sleep? no, he actually only wakes up once during the night to eat, and be changed. He cries a lot? no, he's very friendly. full of smiles most of the time. Christian was born with a birth defect called pyloric stenosis. This means the muscle between his stomach and small intestine was enlarged, and not allowing food to pass through. He spit up almost the entire bottle every single time we fed him, but the first week of his life gained 9 oz, making him 7lb 11 oz.  so we had no clue he was abnormal. At 2 weeks I wasn't able to sleep because each time I fed him he would projectile vomit across the house, I was terrified he would choke on it. I called the pediatrician at 2 weeks and they said this was normal. I broke down in tears talking to tha...
Post a Comment
Read more