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| Good Morning Dad! |
My mom dropped me off at the NICU around 10 this Friday morning. I snapped a Good Morning picture of my baby and sent it right to Kevin. Pam was his nurse today. She was
very kind and very personable so it was nice talking to her since Kevin wasn’t
there to talk with. She was only in
charge of 3 babies today. She had Nathan
in the back of the POD and then 2 more babies at the front of the POD. One of the babies was the baby of the Bride
and Groom that got married in the Solarium.
Her name was Josephine, born at 27 weeks. She seemed to be doing fairly well.
Rose eventually made her way over to me to give me the daily
rundown on Nathan. She told me that his
oxygen requirements went up a bit last night from the day before. I think at that moment, he was at 46% oxygen,
which means he is breathing over half of it himself. But I think the day prior was probably in the
30%. His SATS, or his ‘happy Number’ as
I call it, were in the low 90’s which is still very good and means that they
can keep his oxygen % pretty much stable for the time being. When they weighed him last night at midnight,
he weighed 665 grams, which is around 1 lb 9.4 oz. She mentioned that in order for him to
continue to grow and to get all the nutrients that he needs, they were adding
something to my breast milk. It would
just add more calories and protein to the milk.
They were keeping him at 6 mL for now because since they are adding this
fortifier, then they didn’t want to increase the amount. They said you could do one or the other.
Rose said that his kidneys were looking good and that his
creatinine level was .92! His Glucose
level was down to 125. These were all
good numbers. But then she told me the
results of the blood culture they did on him.
They found out what type of blood infection Nathan really had. It was called Stenotrophomonas. She began to tell me that it was a very rare
infection that they almost never see.
That was hard to hear. This was yet
another ‘RARE’ thing to add to the list of Rarities through this whole
journey. She said that it was a gram
negative bacteria, which meant that it is a bacteria that is very resistant to
most drugs. I started to get very
nervous. Here my baby boy is, with this
infection that they are telling me is very hard to cure, and I can’t help him,
once again. She said that they were
going to start him on antibiotics; one was Sephtazadine and the other was
Bactrim. I later found out that they put
Nathan’s blood in a petry dish and put the Bactrim in with it and it did kill
the infection. And although that
comforted me, I wouldn’t feel good about it until they tested him again and it
was completely gone.
I texted Kevin right away and told him what Rose said or
what I got out of the conversation.
Kevin then texted me right back and had some questions for me, which I
tried to answer but then he wanted me to ask the Doctor or the nurse. It was a lot of information to text so I just
called him. I didn’t care that he was at
work. In that moment I got very overwhelmed. Trying to be the middleman between my husband
and the medical staff when I wasn’t sure I completely grasped the whole
situation myself, became very stressful.
And I am sure that Kevin being 2 hours away and hearing this information
about his son without being able to look at him and assess the situation
himself was stressful as well. It is
just not a fun situation to be in no matter how you look at it or what seat
you’re sitting in.
One positive thing that Rose said was that Nathan wasn’t
acting like he was a sick baby. He was
still very active in terms of being alert when we did his care and moving his
arms and legs. They said when babies
feel sick, they usually let us know, just like Colin did. He didn’t move much. He did not feel good and he let us know.
After Rose gave me the information and I had some time to
process it and talk to Kevin, she came back and told me that we should probably
put a robe, gloves and a mask on when dealing with Nathan. I was very startled. Now I can’t even touch my baby with my own
hands and feel his skin on mine? I
already can’t do so much as mother and now they were taking this away from me
as well. I got really scared; I’m not
going to lie. I asked if it was just for
the nurses or if I had to do it to since I am his mother because it is not like
I am touching or taking care of any other babies. They said that it would be a good idea for me
to do it as well.
I panicked. I felt
like just me being near him was hurting him.
I felt that just sitting by his incubator in a recliner was causing him
harm. That is such a scary feeling of
feeling like you could be the cause of making your baby sick. Looking back on that day, I know now that I
wasn’t hurting him, and gowning and gloving was only protecting him from getting
anything else, but in that moment, I felt like I shouldn’t even be around him. I remember just standing over his incubator
and starting to cry a little because I couldn’t touch him and I was wondering
if he would even know I was with him if I wasn’t touching him. I tried to hide it from Pam that I was sad
and scared but I wasn’t so good at it.
She told me that Nathan was doing well and since he wasn’t acting sick,
that was a good sign.
A few hours went by as I just sat by Nathan. I didn’t reach in and touch him at all
because I was too scared what I would do to him if I did. So as I was sitting there, I heard the nurses
talking and there was a decision to move Nathan and the two other babies in his
POD to isolation. That made me
nervous. Is Nathan’s infection so bad
that he has to be isolated from all the other babies? I fished around for information and got two
sides to the story. There was a POD next
to Nathan’s POD that was under construction and now that it was finished, they
were going to move some babies in there and use Nathan’s POD for new
admissions. The other side of the story
was that it was because of Nathan’s infection and they wanted to move him as
far away from all the RSV babies as possible.
They didn’t want any other baby to get what he had, and they didn’t want
him to get anything from another baby.
I still to this day do not know which was the real reason or
if it was a mixture of both. I was not
allowing myself to look at this move as a positive thing. I was scared and I didn’t have Kevin here to
tell me it was going to be all right. So
I went in to a pumping room because I was having a hard time holding back my
tears, and I called Kevin. I told him
how scared I was that this was all happening and that I cant even touch my own
baby now. He asked if I wanted him to
come down that night instead of the next morning. I told him he didn’t have too and that I was
hopefully stressing out over nothing. He
calmed me down a bit but I was still frightened. I pulled myself together, wiped away the
tears and I went back out to sit by my son.
I really wanted to be there for when they moved Nathan to
isolation so I could make sure that everything went smoothly. I asked Pam how that is done since he is
hooked up to oxygen. She said that they
use the Neo Puff to transfer him and there will be a team of people who do
it. Even though I knew that these people
do this all the time and they know what they were doing, I still wanted to be
there for it. So I waited and I waited. As I waited, I was making a list of
everything I needed Kevin to bring me from home. It became quite the long list.
Nathan got his first dose of Bactrim at 1 pm that day. The Doctor said that it was a 7-10 day
treatment and he gets a dose every 12 hours.
Hopefully, this would help him.
He would be on this antibiotic for a few days before they would do
another CBC (Blood Culture).
It was getting close to 7 and Nathan still hadn’t been
moved. I kept asking when they are going
to do it, but I kept getting the answer, “Soon.” So by this time, I had to leave and get out
of the NICU. So I called my mom to pick
me up. We ate dinner real fast and then
I went back hoping to still be there for when they move him. But upon my arrival, there was a note on my
sign- in page that said, “YOUR BABY HAS BEEN MOVED TO XXXX.” I missed it!
So I went back there and Pam was still there. She said he did excellent during the
transfer. His room now was much
smaller. It was not big enough to fit a
recliner in there to sit by him. There were
4 rooms in isolation. There was a
walkway dividing them in 2 and 2.
Nathan’s POD mates were in the right 2 isolation rooms and then Nathan
was in the back left with the room next to him empty. So I just pulled up a recliner and sat in the
empty room.
Ashley was Nathan’s night nurse. She was a young girl, probably right out of
nursing school. She was the nurse for
all 3 babies in isolation. And because
of Nathan’s infection, she had to gown, glove and mask every time she went in a
baby’s room. There was one point when
all 3 monitors were going off. So she
would go into Nathan’s room for a second, then come out, take everything off,
put all knew garb on, go in the other baby’s room, be in there for a minute,
come out, take everything off, put all knew stuff on and head in to the other
baby’s room. She looked a bit
frazzled. I was watching Nathan’s
monitor and it wasn’t anything bad or urgent, it was just going off because his
SATS were a tad low (high 80’s) or something.
It was hard visiting my son and not even being able to sit
in the room with him. I wasn’t sure of
the ‘rules’ in isolation so I did what I thought I had to do. I asked if I was able to still help with his
care and she said, “Of course!” So when
it was care time, I gowned, gloved and masked and helped take care of my baby
as usual.
After the transfer and before I arrived back to the NICU
after dinner, they did a chest x-ray on Nathan to make sure his tube was
positioned correctly and wasn’t moved during his move. The tube was fine but he did have a little
fluid in his lungs, which could potentially be pneumonia. Of course, when Kevin is there, everything is
fine, but when he is gone, I get bombarded with all these health concerns about
Nathan. They said they would just keep
an eye on it for now.
After sitting in the room next to Nathan and gazing at him
through the glass, I decided it was time to head back to RMH and get some
rest. I had had a really emotional day,
full of fear, worry and tears and I needed to get some rest. I said my Goodnights to my baby and told him
that he would see his Dad tomorrow so he could start feeling better and get rid
of all these bad things.
When I was about to crawl into bed, Kevin face timed
me. He had our bed full of clothes! He made me laugh because he was trying to
pack up all my clothes and Morris (our cat) was walking all over
everything. I missed my kitty. I wish he was there to snuggle with when I
was sad. I had a good laugh and went to
bed. I was going to see him tomorrow and
he was going to be there to be my second pair of ears. I couldn’t wait. After a day like today, I realized that I
really need him by my side in order to get through this.
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