After a bad first birth experience of having a emergency C-Section when they rushed my baby into NICU, I knew something was not right. You could hear what sounded like him ‘grunting’ in the either room. After being told that I couldn’t see him until I had been in recovery for at least 4 hours I was in such an emotional state but also so tired. I still feel awful now but I feel asleep for a hour. I felt so helpless. After I woke from my nap my Fiancée said that he had been to see him and that he is beautiful.
After a few minutes the nurse from NICU came to see me. She handed me 2 pictures they had taken and printed off of him and gave me a card with his foot and fingerprints on it. She explained that he had Congenital pneumonia and Jaundice. I was so worried about he and just wanted to give him a big cuddle.
Not allowed to hold my baby for 3 days
In the pictures he looked really orange and had foam coming from his mouth but no breathing help. When i was finally allowed to go she him as soon as you went onto the NICU ward you could here him grunting. It was so horrible and I just wanted to make it all better. I was shocked to see that he now had a CPAP machine on as his oxygen levels were very low and lots of tubes and wires. I was told he would have to undergo photo therapy and have regular antibiotics and also that he will have to be tube fed so i shall need to express for him.
The nurse also said that I wouldn’t be able to hold him or touch him for a while until his oxygen levels were stable as they didn’t want h im to get ‘excited’ and risk his breathing changing too rapidly and also because of risk of infection. It was so hard but I understood. That night and every night I cried myself to sleep, feeling sorry for my little boy lying helpless in the bed and all I could do was provide him with mommy milk. On the second day the grunting had stopped. I was allowed to push the milk through the feeding tube I was so so happy!
He was the biggest baby in NICU (7lb 13oz and he was 2 and half weeks early!) and they had to make a special bed for him! I gave them the nappies I had as all theirs were too small, but seeing them change his first nappy and all his nappies and I was wishing it was me doing it. On the third day I went in and he had no CPAP machine on! I was so happy.
I was sat there looking at him like I had been doing every day and they needed to change his sheets on the bed. The nurse asked if i wanted to hold he I screamed ‘of course I do!!’. I cried like a baby and didn’t want to let go, was so sad when I had to give him back. Later on in the afternoon I was told I was allowed to try breastfeeding him, then my fiancée was allowed to hold him and then late that afternoon i was told that we could put him in some of his clothes (he had been in just a nappy as his temperature was high.
We was sat their and noticed his oxygen levels kept dropping, it was horrible as I thought all that progress and all that fighting he had been doing and he was all fought out. I was told to go and get some rest. I had been back in my room an hour when the nurse came in and said I had a phone call in regards to Sidney. They said his breathing was bad again and oxygen levels were dropping so they have had to put a box over his head with a oxygen tube in just as he only needed a little bit. The next morning he was off that and wide awake wriggling around with one hell of appetite! They said that he had all my milk and 3 cartons through his tube, but they had removed his tube as he kept pulling it out.
His breathing levels were returning to normal but his jaundice levels were still high. But i was allowed to change him and feed him and it felt so normal and I didn’t ever want to let him go or for anyone else to touch him. I was so happy when I finally got a call to my room from the nurse to say he could come be in my room with me. And the after 2 more days of photo therapy and antibiotics he was finally allowed home.
He is now 18 months and such a happy little boy. He has had to have a lot of test since this and he also had a urine infection at 12 weeks (which is another blog post I shall write about) He had tests until the age of 13 months but all came back fine and he was discharged and no problems since. It was a bad experience and so scary but he is such a strong little fighter.
