3.01.2011

Additional thoughts from our "vacation" at the hospital

Friday evening (right before I was about to take a shower too) they had to bump us out of our single room into a shared room as the pediatric unit was filling up and they needed our room for an isolation case. I was kinda sad too as hubby was finally able to stay overnight on the weekend and we lost the pull-out couch bed that was in the single and got stuck with a small pull-out chair bed. We made it work - one of us always had to be laying on our side and it was an excuse to get some much needed snuggle time in too!

When we moved rooms, there was another younger couple, close in age to us, with a baby - maybe a year and a half old, as he could watch Mickey DVDs and grasp what was going on. They had brought him in earlier in the week for a fever, but the doctor's couldn't figure out what was causing it. Saturday they did an MRI on him and turns out he had a huge abscess on his hip that was bigger than his bladder and they needed to do surgery to get it drained! Poor guy! He was crying in pain a lot too and scared of any of the hospital staff in uniform! They had them move to a different room for recovery while he was in surgery though. I saw the mom a few times in the hall the rest of the weekend - she looked like she was doing okay so I'm assuming the surgery went well.

Our next "roommates" for the remainder of our stay... well, I feel bad for their little guy! Apparently the baby - about 4 months old I gathered - is a twin who was born 10 weeks early, but has had one health issue after another and was on oxygen when they brought him in Saturday evening. Also, since he was born he's been in the hospital the majority of the time - the longest stretch at home was just 2 days! This morning one of the doctors that's been working with them came in and was telling the nurse how annoyed he was that they brought him back in again as there seemed to be nothing wrong with him this time, other than the mom freaked out over something that was nothing. Like I said, I felt really bad for the little guy as his parents just kinda left him there! They were there til about 11pm or so Saturday night before leaving to check-in to a hotel nearby (guess they didn't want to try the pull-out chair like we did!) and they came back a little bit briefly Sunday afternoon but left by 6pm - soon after they left, their little guy woke up, crying, like he was lonely. I was holding Jay as hubby went to go get us dinner, and I just felt so bad for the guy I called for the nurses, letting them know his parents had left recently and he was just crying so much - one of them came in to hold him for a bit til he fell asleep again. They had doctors in and out throughout the night checking in on him... we left today just before noon and his parents still weren't back!

I couldn't imagine leaving Jay alone in the hospital like that! Yes, he's not even a month old yet and he won't remember any of this when he's older, but still... I couldn't bare the thought of my baby waking up, crying, in a strange foreign scary place like the hospital without a familiar face there to comfort him and hold him! I'd feel like such a horrible parent!

Also, the nurse we had our last night there... yeah, not a fan. All the other nurses were great and really helpful, this one was just really young and seemed a bit inexperienced - it showed. She also got on my nerves a little bit later in the night, as she had offered to feed Jay for his 3am feeding so I wouldn't have to wake up and could catch some extra sleep since hubby wasn't there to help me. Well I put him down around 130am but he woke back up by 2. She walked past in the hallway and saw us and came in to check up on us. She thought he was hungry despite his feeding not being for almost an hour and she offered to feed him early so I could climb back in bed. I hesitated at first but ended up agreeing due to my tiredness and her insistence. I was half awake, half asleep but I had a bad feeling he'd spit up while she fed him because she wouldn't make him slow down (Jay starts out acting like he's starving and downs the first .5-1oz like it's no one's business and by the end of Sunday he was wolfing down 2oz bottles in 10minutes or less!). And I was right... she gave him 1oz and burped him, but I could hear him gulping like crazy, not stopping to actually swallow, and he "threw up." I was kinda pissed but too tired to get up or say anything. She stopped the feeding, cleaned him off, and put him down without offering him anymore to fill himself up (I noticed that if he spits up a little, after a few minutes for his tummy to settle he'll eat a little more to make up for what he spit up)... he started fussing again 20min later and I got up with him. We gave him more to eat at 4am and I insisted on feeding him myself this time - he ate all 2oz, no problem for me. The nurse was shocked. Clearly, mommy knows how to feed her baby. He ended up sleeping on my chest that night - I think the doctors and nurses coming in every hour or so to check on oxygen baby was waking him up when he was sleeping alone in the crib. I woke up at 8am, shocked that 1) the nurse didn't wake us up for his 7am as she was so anal the night before about us waking him up at the 3hr mark so he wouldn't get off schedule, and 2) she didn't tell us at the 730 shift change that she was leaving and inform us who our daytime nurse would be as they did every morning! Yeah... the rest of the nurses were great... but her, she kinda got on my nerves as the night/morning went on.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What's your thoughts?