The Hospital Stay

So there we are, Little Lady and I... Daddy has gone home to be with our Little Men. My Mom (Thank God!) came down and brought be an overnight bag with comfy clothes, jammies, hygiene products, juice and magazines to get me through the night. She stayed a while, which I was glad for. She stayed while they drew blood from Little Lady (That was a challenge. The phlebotomist couldn't even do it on her tiny little veins, so an actual Dr ended up doing it.).
Little Lady was hooked up to a lot of equipment. She had tubes going into her nose, monitors strapped to her chest, big pager looking things hooked to her. She had an IV in, that looked simply awful, because on baby's so tiny they put a whole splint thing on and everything to keep the baby from accidentally pulling it out.
Our hospital contracted a specialist to come run tests on her.
She was also attached to a sleep monitoring machine.
She had one monitor hooked to her that was a PH reader. It read the levels of acid in her stomach. There were buttons on this monitor (it was bigger than a cell phone, smaller than an e-book) that I had to push. When she was laying down, I pushed the button. When she was upright, being held, I pushed that button. I pushed a button at the start of a feeding, and at the end of a feeding.
The main focus of this night was to do a sleep study to test her for sleep apnea  and to do a "PH probe" to check her PH Levels, and levels of acid.
 After going on a 4 hour fast (that was a looooong time for Little Lady) she was given a bottle (yep, a bottle. Not good for a 9 day old nursing baby.) of apple juice. They needed that as a base to do the PH Study. After she finished the apple juice I was allowed to hold her, change her, feed her normally. I just had to make sure I pushed the buttons whenever we changed activities or positions.
It was a VERY long night for me. It was so hard to see my precious new baby, who already had so much stacked against her, lying in this hospital bed with so many machines attached to her and tubes going into her. I do not have a picture to share of this hospital stay, because quite frankly, I didn't want one.
The next morning, Dr's made rounds. They came in... basically just checked on Little Lady, and said there was a possibility of discharge late that afternoon or early evening, once the specialist had gotten the results of his Sleep Study and PH Probe. Later that morning, the specialist came back, and took most of the tubes and machines off of Little Lady (yay!). He took his equipment and left, leaving me with expectations of him having the results all ready by that evening. Little Lady was looking much better now! All she had on her were the heart and oxygen monitors and the IV. I was hopeful that we would go home.
I washed myself with a soapy towel in the restroom, had some coffee and a little bit of food. And sat in that hospital room All. Day. Long. In the afternoon, Little Lady had an Upper GI done. She had (yet another) bottle. It was full of barium, which is a milky type liquid that they use to see it going down in the x-rays.
 Daddy came to visit us again that afternoon. That helped my state of mind. I actually left the room for a little while and we went to the cafeteria together and grabbed a bite to eat.
A little while later, a Dr. came in to tell us that the results from the PH Probe and Sleep Study were in. The results showed that yes, Little Lady does have GERD. Also, she did have one brief episode of apnea during the sleep study. While we weren't glad that she has GERD, we were happy to have an answer to what caused the scary episode that sent us to the hospital in the first place. The pain from the GERD caused her to react that way, some babies have that reaction during an episode and also the not-breathing part was most likely her instinctively holding back vomit. So now we had to discuss treatment options.
Daddy was just as disappointed as I was to learn that Little Lady and I would not be going home that day.
The course of treatment for Little Lady, to begin with, would be a dose of Zantac. You have probably heard of it. So, a nurse comes in and administered a dose of the Zantac for her. It was flavored with peppermint. She gets a very tiny amount, .4ml. The reason why we couldn't go home, is that they wanted to make sure she didn't have a bad reaction to the medication for some reason. So we were to stay there for at least 12 hours after her first dose. So Little Lady and I settle in for another long night.
I laid there on the cot next to her crib... pretending to watch TV or flip through a magazine. Or Facebooking from my phone and texting. Just trying to kill time. Eventually I found some sleep, but never for long, and I woke often to nurse Little Lady. About 11pm, I finally got Little Lady into what seemed like a sound sleep. I was about to drift off myself when... Roommates. We got roommates. Yeah, and they were LOUD too. The case was a 2 year old little boy... with two of the worst things that can happen to a child... he had choked on a hot dog (that hadn't been cut up) and then while he was choking, fell into the spa and drowned. I was annoyed with these people 1)for being so noisy and waking up Little Lady and me. And 2) for not watching their child and having to be there in the first place. It was well past visiting hours, but since they were newly admitted, they felt the need to bring a whole parade of people through there. Lovely. Not much sleep that night...
The next morning, I was a mess. I called my husband and just broke down crying. I missed him, I missed my Little Men, and I wanted to go home (my new home, that I hadn't even spent a night in yet). I was crying when the nurse came in, and I was crying when the Dr's made rounds. To make matters worse... I couldn't get Little Lady to latch on and nurse, and it had been about 8 hours since her last feeding. The nurse says that if she wont latch on and eat, then she has to have a bottle. After about 40 minutes of trying... Little Lady finally latched on, but it was a weak latch. She only nursed for about 20 minutes. Right as we were finishing up with nursing, a lactation consultant comes in. She weighed Little Lady, and it turned out that she had lost almost a full pound since birth. Some weight loss in a  newborn is normal, but apparently, this amount was cause for concern. The LC showed me all kinds of different ways to get Little Lady to keep breastfeeding. Most of these alternatives would have taken me the better part of 17 hours a day devoted to feeding her. MAYBE if she were my first and only child, I could pull it off. But it just wasn't realistic... I have a husband and two other children to take care of. Not to mention that I would need to supplement with formula to help Little Lady gain weight.  So... I made the decision to pump breast milk,and give her alternate feedings of breast milk and formula, and only from bottles. That was a very hard decision for me to make, because I really did enjoy nursing my babies. But I just couldn't do it...
That morning, I really couldn't stop crying. All I wanted was to go home and be with my family. And nobody could tell me when we would be able to go. Little Lady had already reached the 12 hour mark from her medication, and gotten her 2nd dose. Still, nobody could tell me when we would get discharged.
Finally, about 3pm, some Dr's came in and told me that she was cleared by the Pediatric Gastrointologist for discharge. So they started the discharge paperwork and I told my husband that he could head down to the hospital. My mom went to watch the boys while my husband came to get us. The Ped GI doctor came in to let me know there was a prescription for the Zantac down at the pharmacy. We were to give it to Little Lady every 12 hours. Keep her elevated at all times, because laying flat would most likely aggravate the reflux... He scheduled us a follow up visit a little over a week later, as it takes a week for the Zantac to take full effect. He also told us, that he was surprised by how high the test showed her PH Level to be (amount of acid) based on me telling him that she never spit up. (She still never does. She's only ever spit up one time now, and she's 2 months old. She will however, on occasion, projectile vomit. Icky.)
My husband arrived at the hospital to get us. And we waited, and waited, and waited. The nurse came in and removed her from the monitors and her IV. We waited some more. My husband went and picked up her prescription at the pharmacy and we waited some more. FINALLY about 5:30pm, on July 26th, we were discharged.
I cried again on the way home. I had never felt so many emotions in such a short period of time. I was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted.
I got home and hugged my Little Men tighter than I've ever hugged them.
When we got home we ordered take out pizza, salad, and lasagna from a local pizzeria.
I slept so good that night.