My first night “alone” as a mother of two was pretty good. G cooked some delicious salmon last night. It is so nice to be fed! Made it very easy last night. I got to bed and woke up early this morning to get going.
Arrived at the hospital before 8 so I was doing pretty good.
Magen is the nurse today and she has a nursing student named Lindsey (from Auburn) with her. They have taken great care of Justin today!
Had an appointment with the lactation consultant, Kristi, at 8:30. Justin latched on and did great! Yay! Gives me hope to be able to help him with getting milk and I know that it will work. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t immediate but I tried to keep calm while he got quite upset. He eventually calmed down and did quite well. Kristi said that me being patient and persistent was very helpful. I needed to hear that – and it worked!
So then Justin had an appointment for the CT Scan at 9:45. Magen came in to give him some medicine (Ativan) to calm him down before the procedure. I thought it would make me sad but it was fine.
30-45 minutes later, they rolled Justin back in the room. I said, “Wow, that was fast!”. Remember that IV he got yesterday? You know, the one that took 3 tries to get in again? Well, that IV came out. Why? A technician flushed the dye in his IV too quickly and blew it out. Joy! So he needed his IV back before he could go back to CT for the scan. Nurse Frank was called in – after all, he’s the specialist.
I had to take care of the pumping stuff so I hid behind the curtain in our room. Little guy was screaming. When I finished, I noticed that he might need some help. I tried calming Justin down while Frank looked for a vein. It looks like his skin is so fat that they couldn’t find a vein. Brian arrived about the same time. J was screaming while he was being held down. The sticks didn’t bother him as much. Brian was having a hard time with it so we walked out of the room for a few minutes. Anyway, three tries later (yes, again), he was all set in his left hand. Poor thing! He’s been stuck quite a bit lately.
He was pretty sleepy from the time he got back from CT the first time until his appointment for the next time. Nursing was not a good idea at the time. So, off he went to CT again at 2:00. I asked the nurse to politely tell the lab technician to be careful when injecting the dye. Magen said she would come after the technician if the dye didn’t work well!
Brian and I grabbed some lunch and by the time we got back the room, or 3:45, he was done! He was still pretty sleepy.
So around the same time, I received a call from Deborah, Mary’s sister, asking if I could take some pictures of her little girl born at 26 weeks. She is 3 or so days older than Justin. Deborah was going to hold Tera for the first time! I headed up to the RNICU and overheard a parent saying that the baby didn’t have a heart beat. I knew it wasn’t good. I headed over to Deborah and took a few photos. One of the most beautiful things – a mother holding her baby for the first time. I’ll see if she would be okay with me posting a couple of those photos.
So I headed back to the room, it was about 4:00 or so. The doctors had not made their rounds and we found out that they were busy with a baby who was in critical condition. I think it was the lady I passed in the hallway.
We asked to speak with a doctor, anyone! Dr. Johnson, a resident, came by and said that the CT scan found that Justin has a right sided aortic arch – DUH! He said that is all he could say about the scan. The Pediatric Cardiologist is the best to go over the results. I asked about circumcision and he said that Justin’s regular doctor would need to perform the procedure.
We stayed at the hospital until after 8. We met Joanna, the night nurse who was great.
