100 hours with Joe.....
Joe's trying pregnancy & difficult labor & delivery was a start to his start. He is determined to have it be known, HE will be the most difficult Tonsager....
He is perfect. He has butterscotch hair & chubby cheeks, dark eyes & long toes. He has his Dad's chin & my nose, just like all his siblings. "He looks like a Tonsager."
Being born to a gestational diabetic mom, you have routine, then additional, blood sugar checks. Joe's went low, then lower. His lowest was a 12. He should have been over 30 for the first 24 hours, then over 40. He nursed good twice in his first hours, then as his blood sugar dropped, he went lethargic, almost catatonic. He didn't even flinch at his next blood sugar check. It was hard to watch.
The drip of sugar water sling shot his blood sugar up to 71. He was still fairly out of it for the next few hours & laid in the nursery under heat lights, hooked to his IV. I wasn't able to nurse him during that time & had to start pumping. Uggggg.
Then his temps kept falling. He struggled to maintain. Red Flags.
The low sugars can be typical of a baby born to a diabetic, however, the low temps are not & the low temps can actually cause the low sugars.
They started an IV with sugar water & ran some labs. I hate when they have to take your babies away & hook them up to cords. We knew with all the complications of my pregnancy, with my labor, his nearly preemie age & in general with how this boy seems to roll, that there was a strong chance we would deal with some issues after birth. It still just really sucks as it unravels though.
We really wanted to avoid the NICU in Rapid City if at all possible as they are not set up at all for parents to stay with their babies. You have to rent a hotel room, then go in to your baby's cubical where there isn't enough room for both of you so you really can't stay long. Then they call you for feedings, but not overnight feedings, they pretty much give you no choice on bottle feeding then. It just makes a trying situation a HORRIBLE situation. We did a turn there in 2006 with Zach. He came blasting out too fast, didn't get the fluid expelled from his lungs during delivery & had "wet lung" which was a domino effect of low O2, periodic breathing spells, apnea & followed it up with severe acid reflux, jaundice, years of respiratory diseases, asthma & a feistiness that is unwavering. I've always whole heartedly believed in the research that states babies who were not allowed normal contact, such as those under intensive medical care in infancy, are prone to have quirkiness & odd tendencies....you met Zach?
Wayne has done an amazing job of holding everyone together. He comes over to the hospital mid to late morning after getting the kids to everywhere they need to be. He eats lunch with Joe & I, then drags me out for some fresh air & exercise. We went to Walmart for snacks yesterday, took some laps, threw some extra crap in the cart, I was going to go grab a new scale because ours had broke a couple weeks back and he immediately told me "nope, not buying one of those right now. We will get you one of those fun house mirrors maybe, the ones make you tall and skinny. NOT a scale." I suppose that's a good idea. Thanks for looking out man.
With the hypertension & trying not to turn preeclamptic, there was an intense amount of fluid retention at the end of my pregnancy that I am really struggling with still. I have to wear compression socks and get shortness of breath when walking & headaches.... it's been super fun on top of it all.
After errands, Wayne holds Joe a while until supper gets here, we eat supper together, then he goes back to Belle, fixes the kids supper, spends the evening with them & gets them all in bed.
Some days they all end up in the room. Family of 8 in a tiny recovery room. It's cozy, but thank goodness- ALLOWED. When stuff started really going south we got the limit visitors speech and after his IV went bad & had to be moved, we quit letting the kids hold him at all. I actually didn't even see the older 5 at all yesterday. It was kind of super sad, but I really feel Wayne has done a great job of getting them time here, him time here, me time out, us all time together & stuff done that needs done. I can't give him enough credit.
Anyhow, back to Joe...... we were assigned a pediatrician (it's rally week, ours is on vacation), who assured us they could handle his ailments here & would not need to move to the NICU unless something more intense pops up. Hold your breath & cross your fingers.
His sugars are very fluctuant. Every time they thought they had enough stable ones to start weaning back the drip, he went low again.
The lab work came back as low platelets, low lymphocytes, and high nutrifills. More red flags. All of their findings on their own, they said, wouldn't be too worrisome, however added all together were concerning & inductive to an infection.
This was where Wayne asked about meningitis. OMG. Nooooooo. They said to confirm meningitis they would have to do a LUMBAR PUNCTURE....NOOOOoooo. He asked what the treatment would look like if it were positive. The pediatrician said, the same, strong antibiotics through IV.
How does a baby get meningitis? Here's some info on neonatal meningitis. While you are perusing it, I'll inform you, my maternal strep test was negative. I was getting sick every third day the last couple weeks and 2 days before he was induced I had spent the day in the hospital getting 2 bags of saline & nausea meds. This makes me curious that I may have had something more going on than just pregnancy struggles. They had to try 4 times to get my IV in, 3 blown veins & then had to turn it off & wait a while so they could draw blood out of the only good vein left on the same arm as the IV once more lab orders came in. I do not remember the lab results, or if I even go them back before going in again. I left with 6 poke holes, which is pretty average for me. 8 is the record for attempts.
Back to Joe...
After 24 and after 48 hours, his blood culture came back negative for bacterial growth. Once this was determined, they did not feel a lunar puncture was necessary. THANK YOU GOD!
They are unsure what infection is plaguing him, but they are nipping it in the bud now, whatever it is and treating it like it is meningitis. His file states his diagnoses as:
Neonatal - under 28 days old
IDM- Infant of a Diabetic Mother
Hypoglycemic
Thrombocytopenia
Need for Observation/Evaluation for Infant Sepsis
Here is a website with more info on infant sepsis.
At 24 hours old they do a bilirubin check for jaundice. We had been holding our breath on getting the results back for this as all the boys had mild to severe jaundice. The summer boys only had low numbers and got the okay to just sit in the sun. Andy was hospitalized for a week in Chadron & nearly sent up to the NICU in Rapid for it. Zach had to go under the lights for a couple of days of his NICU stay too. We are no strangers to "whimpy white boy syndrome" as his nurses put it.
Sure enough.....his count was elevated and in they came with a bililight. Glowing blue baby.
His constant fluctuation of blood sugars is giving us all whiplash & bouts of false hope.
As of 10pm Monday night the 30th, his sugars have been consistently in the good range & they plan to drop the drip back in half for the night, then if he remains stable, down to the lowest dose in the morning.
His bilirubin count has risen enough to get the light turned off in the morning until his next "rebound check" on Wednesday morning. I'm taking full advantage of holding him as much as possible while it is off....it's a horribly awkward nuisance of a thing with lights that hurt your eyes, a slippery cover & sharp edges & a ridiculously heavy, stiff cord that doesn't ply well.
8am Tuesday morning, off goes the biliblanket, down goes the drip, stable are the sugars.....it's looking up.
9am Joe is 100 hours old.
He has 2 more doses of Gentamicin, 9pm&am doses of Ampicillin through Friday morning, will hopefully be off the sugar drip Wednesday morning and hopefully stay off the bililights.
Let's keep moving forward kid!!!!
(make sure you read the next posts, spoiler alert, he doesn't)
He is perfect. He has butterscotch hair & chubby cheeks, dark eyes & long toes. He has his Dad's chin & my nose, just like all his siblings. "He looks like a Tonsager."
Being born to a gestational diabetic mom, you have routine, then additional, blood sugar checks. Joe's went low, then lower. His lowest was a 12. He should have been over 30 for the first 24 hours, then over 40. He nursed good twice in his first hours, then as his blood sugar dropped, he went lethargic, almost catatonic. He didn't even flinch at his next blood sugar check. It was hard to watch.
The drip of sugar water sling shot his blood sugar up to 71. He was still fairly out of it for the next few hours & laid in the nursery under heat lights, hooked to his IV. I wasn't able to nurse him during that time & had to start pumping. Uggggg.
Then his temps kept falling. He struggled to maintain. Red Flags.
The low sugars can be typical of a baby born to a diabetic, however, the low temps are not & the low temps can actually cause the low sugars.
They started an IV with sugar water & ran some labs. I hate when they have to take your babies away & hook them up to cords. We knew with all the complications of my pregnancy, with my labor, his nearly preemie age & in general with how this boy seems to roll, that there was a strong chance we would deal with some issues after birth. It still just really sucks as it unravels though.
We really wanted to avoid the NICU in Rapid City if at all possible as they are not set up at all for parents to stay with their babies. You have to rent a hotel room, then go in to your baby's cubical where there isn't enough room for both of you so you really can't stay long. Then they call you for feedings, but not overnight feedings, they pretty much give you no choice on bottle feeding then. It just makes a trying situation a HORRIBLE situation. We did a turn there in 2006 with Zach. He came blasting out too fast, didn't get the fluid expelled from his lungs during delivery & had "wet lung" which was a domino effect of low O2, periodic breathing spells, apnea & followed it up with severe acid reflux, jaundice, years of respiratory diseases, asthma & a feistiness that is unwavering. I've always whole heartedly believed in the research that states babies who were not allowed normal contact, such as those under intensive medical care in infancy, are prone to have quirkiness & odd tendencies....you met Zach?
Wayne has done an amazing job of holding everyone together. He comes over to the hospital mid to late morning after getting the kids to everywhere they need to be. He eats lunch with Joe & I, then drags me out for some fresh air & exercise. We went to Walmart for snacks yesterday, took some laps, threw some extra crap in the cart, I was going to go grab a new scale because ours had broke a couple weeks back and he immediately told me "nope, not buying one of those right now. We will get you one of those fun house mirrors maybe, the ones make you tall and skinny. NOT a scale." I suppose that's a good idea. Thanks for looking out man.
With the hypertension & trying not to turn preeclamptic, there was an intense amount of fluid retention at the end of my pregnancy that I am really struggling with still. I have to wear compression socks and get shortness of breath when walking & headaches.... it's been super fun on top of it all.
After errands, Wayne holds Joe a while until supper gets here, we eat supper together, then he goes back to Belle, fixes the kids supper, spends the evening with them & gets them all in bed.
Some days they all end up in the room. Family of 8 in a tiny recovery room. It's cozy, but thank goodness- ALLOWED. When stuff started really going south we got the limit visitors speech and after his IV went bad & had to be moved, we quit letting the kids hold him at all. I actually didn't even see the older 5 at all yesterday. It was kind of super sad, but I really feel Wayne has done a great job of getting them time here, him time here, me time out, us all time together & stuff done that needs done. I can't give him enough credit.
Anyhow, back to Joe...... we were assigned a pediatrician (it's rally week, ours is on vacation), who assured us they could handle his ailments here & would not need to move to the NICU unless something more intense pops up. Hold your breath & cross your fingers.
His sugars are very fluctuant. Every time they thought they had enough stable ones to start weaning back the drip, he went low again.
The lab work came back as low platelets, low lymphocytes, and high nutrifills. More red flags. All of their findings on their own, they said, wouldn't be too worrisome, however added all together were concerning & inductive to an infection.
This was where Wayne asked about meningitis. OMG. Nooooooo. They said to confirm meningitis they would have to do a LUMBAR PUNCTURE....NOOOOoooo. He asked what the treatment would look like if it were positive. The pediatrician said, the same, strong antibiotics through IV.
How does a baby get meningitis? Here's some info on neonatal meningitis. While you are perusing it, I'll inform you, my maternal strep test was negative. I was getting sick every third day the last couple weeks and 2 days before he was induced I had spent the day in the hospital getting 2 bags of saline & nausea meds. This makes me curious that I may have had something more going on than just pregnancy struggles. They had to try 4 times to get my IV in, 3 blown veins & then had to turn it off & wait a while so they could draw blood out of the only good vein left on the same arm as the IV once more lab orders came in. I do not remember the lab results, or if I even go them back before going in again. I left with 6 poke holes, which is pretty average for me. 8 is the record for attempts.
Back to Joe...
After 24 and after 48 hours, his blood culture came back negative for bacterial growth. Once this was determined, they did not feel a lunar puncture was necessary. THANK YOU GOD!
They are unsure what infection is plaguing him, but they are nipping it in the bud now, whatever it is and treating it like it is meningitis. His file states his diagnoses as:
Neonatal - under 28 days old
IDM- Infant of a Diabetic Mother
Hypoglycemic
Thrombocytopenia
Need for Observation/Evaluation for Infant Sepsis
Here is a website with more info on infant sepsis.
At 24 hours old they do a bilirubin check for jaundice. We had been holding our breath on getting the results back for this as all the boys had mild to severe jaundice. The summer boys only had low numbers and got the okay to just sit in the sun. Andy was hospitalized for a week in Chadron & nearly sent up to the NICU in Rapid for it. Zach had to go under the lights for a couple of days of his NICU stay too. We are no strangers to "whimpy white boy syndrome" as his nurses put it.
Sure enough.....his count was elevated and in they came with a bililight. Glowing blue baby.
His constant fluctuation of blood sugars is giving us all whiplash & bouts of false hope.
As of 10pm Monday night the 30th, his sugars have been consistently in the good range & they plan to drop the drip back in half for the night, then if he remains stable, down to the lowest dose in the morning.
His bilirubin count has risen enough to get the light turned off in the morning until his next "rebound check" on Wednesday morning. I'm taking full advantage of holding him as much as possible while it is off....it's a horribly awkward nuisance of a thing with lights that hurt your eyes, a slippery cover & sharp edges & a ridiculously heavy, stiff cord that doesn't ply well.
8am Tuesday morning, off goes the biliblanket, down goes the drip, stable are the sugars.....it's looking up.
9am Joe is 100 hours old.
He has 2 more doses of Gentamicin, 9pm&am doses of Ampicillin through Friday morning, will hopefully be off the sugar drip Wednesday morning and hopefully stay off the bililights.
Let's keep moving forward kid!!!!
(make sure you read the next posts, spoiler alert, he doesn't)
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