Take Your Son to Work Day...

It's amazing that in a matter of minutes you can go from the happiest you have ever been in your life, to the saddest and most scared you have ever been. Combine those feelings with just delivering a baby and hormones that are all over the place and you have one distraught mommy. As many of you know, right after a baby is born, they take their first breath/scream. When our baby was born, he took his first deep breath, and as he did, he sucked in some fluid and meconium (poop) at the same time. He initially seemed to be okay as he kept screaming, so the nurse decided to let him stay on my chest for a few minutes. After some time, the nurse took him over to the radiant warmer and tried to suction out his belly and give him some chest PT. She noticed as she was doing his assessment, that he was starting to have difficulty breathing. She put a pulse oximeter on him to see how well he was oxygenating, and his oxygen saturations were in the low 80's (supposed to be in the high 90's-100). She gave him some oxygen in the delivery room and called the NICU to come evaluate him. As I sat in my hospital bed feeling completely helpless, in walked Johnni, a WONDERFUL nurse that used to work with me at Good Sam, before transferring to Bethesda North full time. When Johnni walked into the room, a feeling of relief came over me. Don't get me wrong, I was still terrified, but seeing a familiar face made what we were going through a tiny bit easier. She assessed our little boy and decided that he did indeed need to go with her to the NICU. We kissed our sweet boy and watched as she took him out of our room. I had to remain in my delivery room for two hours post delivery to make sure that I was stable enough to be transferred. As soon as the two hour mark hit, my nurse and Chad pushed me down to the NICU.

Bethesda North (where I delivered) is the "sister" hospital to Good Samaritan Hospital (where I work in the NICU). So even though I don't work in the NICU at Bethesda North, I still know most of the people that work there and I am familiar with their unit. Their NICU, called the Special Care Nursery, is a level II unit and is much smaller (12 private rooms) versus Good Sam's 60 bed Level III unit. Before entering the NICU, we were warned that our little boy was on oxygen (via head hood) and that he had an IV. As we scrubbed in, I couldn't help but sob. I hadn't even seen him yet, and the tears were streaming down my face. "How could this be happening to us?" Some people joked around and said that it's always the NICU nurse's whose babies go to the NICU, but at the time, I just could not see any humor in the situation. As I was pushed into his room, I felt as if my heart was being ripped from my chest. There lay our two hour old baby, breathing more than 120 breaths per minute, with a spaceship helmet over his head delivering oxygen, and an IV in his little arm. Johnni was telling us everything that they did: IV, labs, chest x-ray, etc. Chad and I both just starred at him. Even though I had seen this situation 100 times over, it is a completely different story when it is your own child. As scared as I was, I was familiar with the situation. My husband on the other hand, was beside himself. The look on his face as he starred at our son, was heart wrenching. I found myself comforting him and telling him that he was going to be okay. Johnni told us that the on call pediatrician had been called at home to come see him (keep in mind, this is still the middle of the night). I refused to be taken to my room until I saw him and spoke with him. It took him 30 minutes or so to get there, but when he did, he did a full assessment, looked at his labs and x-ray and told us that he was confident he was going to be okay. He said that he believed that he was having difficulty due to the fluid that he swallowed at delivery and that he should recover quickly. His chest x-ray was "fluffy" and his diagnosis was what they call TTN (transient tachypnea of the newborn, aka fast breathing). He wanted to start him on antibiotics just in case there was an infection of some sort (pneumonia). We stayed in the NICU for a while until my nurse said that I needed to be taken to my postpartum room before shift change. We said goodbye to our little boy and went down to my room.

The night shift nurse did a quick assessment on me and got me out of bed to use the bathroom. She told me I needed to try and eat so she could give me some pain meds. She left the room to get my meds and when she came back, I was in the bed sobbing so hard I could hardly breath. She tried to comfort me, but there was nothing she could say to make me feel better. I took some pain medication and tried to rest so I could get back to the NICU as soon as possible. I guess I must have drifted off, because the next time I opened my eyes, Chad was no longer in the room. After about 10 minutes, he walks into the room with a smile on his face. I said "did you go see our boy?" and he just said "of course I did!" He gave me the wonderful news that he was already off of his oxygen and was wide awake looking around his room. He told me that Johnni said he looked SO much better and that she would be back that night.

In order to keep this post from getting any longer, I will break our NICU stay into several posts. Now that I am able to make light of our situation, I joke and say that my sweet boy just wanted to see what Mommy did for a living, so he turned his "birth" day into "take your son to work day" :)