Out of Order

I was gonna finish up my post with Wiggler's birth story today, but we were forced into the ER on Monday and I've been working on this post and that one simultaneously. The birth story can wait another day or two.

A little background first: the day we were discharged from the hospital, we were shown tiny little orange crystals in the wee man's diaper from his pee. We were told that they were normal and not to freak out if we saw them later. So we take him home and end up seeing them in just about every diaper change, but we didn't think anything of it because we had been told they were "normal".

On Monday afternoon, we took Little Man for his first check up where the RN that checked him out said that he looked a bit jaundiced. She sent us to get a blood draw and they told us that we should have the results back by the end of the day or early the next morning. We took him to the lab where I had my first Mom Breakdown. I don't know what that lady was doing to his poor little heel but it was making him scream bloody murder. She took forever and he just cried and cried and I cried along with him.

We didn't hear by the end of the day what the results were, but we had another appointment for a re-check with the pedi on Tuesday morning. As soon as we walked in the door, they turned us right back around and had us take him to the ER because his bilirubin levels were scary high. I guess they had a power outage that didn't allow for the lab to get in touch with the pedi right away. We really should have taken him in on Monday for treatment.

They were waiting for us when we got to the hospital and admitted him to the Continued Care Nursery right away. I was able to feed him once more before they took him to run some labs, get an IV in him, and then get set up under the bili lights. His level at the lab on Monday was 22. When he was admitted, it was 28. They ran labs again at 2:00pm and they were at 25. The final count of the day was 22 at 10:00pm. At the end of the day on Wednesday, his level was only down to 21; so they're going down slowly. I'm not sure where they need to be before they'll let him come home. The nurse that's taking care of him in the nursery said that the highest level she'd ever seen was 30. Our little dude almost tied the record. Freaks me the hell out.

I'm still feeding him regularly so that my supply can build up, but they're having to supplement with formula because I'm not producing enough to fully sustain him yet. It explains so much; he would just cry and cry and I couldn't figure out why. He was fed, burped, changed, and warm, but he would cry so hard he shaked sometimes. Now I know it was because he was starving. I wish someone would've told us that those damn little pee crystals were a very bad sign if you started seeing them regularly. They meant that he was getting more dehydrated by the day. My milk took it's sweet time coming in; I'm barely up to an ounce after pumping for 30 minutes. I thought he was getting enough to eat because he pulled away, but he must've been doing that because I went dry. My poor sweet baby.

We spent Tuesday and Wednesday running back and forth to the hospital. Thank goodness it's so close to us! We feed him every three hours and spend about an hour there at a time, so one of every three hours is spent with our little man. We would stay the whole day, but for two hours, we would just be staring at him while he bathes under the blue lights. We can't pick him up or anything, so figure our time would be better spent getting things ready for him to come home. We were left with a whole lot to do because he decided to come early.

I missed my Little Man so much. It killed me to walk away from the hospital on Tuesday and Wednesday night. If we could've figured out a comfortable way to sleep on two metal folding chairs, I think we would've spent the night with him! We were up bright and early Wednesday morning and went to feed him again. We had to come back home right away though because he peed all over his daddy! Diaper fail! LOL : ) I did much better on Wednesday. I know this whole thing is harder on his daddy and I than it is on him. He sleeps most of the day and when he's awake, we're there to feed him, burp him and change him. By the time we leave, he's asleep again. The nurse told us this morning that his levels have dropped far enough for him to be able to come home today; they wanted to keep him till 4 to make sure he doesn't rebound. So now, it's T - one hour and 30 minutes till our boy comes home!