The days after....

The first time I held Easton (besides it being amazing) I noticed that his breathing was weird. He sounded very stuffy...almost wheezy. It kept bothering me, I didn't think a brand new baby should sound that way, but I let it go because every time a nurse or the pediatrician assessed him, they said he looked & sounded great. Well the afternoon after he was born, I was working with a lactation consultant who was also a NICU nurse & she was concerned about his breathing. She decided to take him to the nursery to check him out. I thought "Ok, I'll just take a little nap until he gets back". A bit later she came back in and let me know they had the neonatologist look at Easton & they were admitting him to the NICU.

I was a mess. The NICU is somewhere I never wanted to go back to but there I was in the same scary position of possibly having a very sick baby. I immediately went down to the NICU to be with Easton. Before I saw him though, I spoke with the Neonatologist about what they had planned for my little guy. Basically they told me that his breathing was very rapid & he was having to work very hard to breath. The doctor was concerned that he had a problem called Choanal Atresia (click on it to read about it) which obviously affects breathing, but could also come with heart problems, eye problems, & other stuff. They did blood cultures to look for infection, a CT scan to check the bones in his nose, an echocardiogram to look for heart abnormalities, and a chest x-ray. Thankfully all the tests came back normal...but that didn't tell us what was wrong with him.

So we just waited. He was on monitors and they put a feeding tube in and we just waited. He had his own NICU room and it had a couch & a recliner & we were allowed to stay with him as little or as much as we wanted. Of course we didn't want to leave him....but we did end up going back to my room to get a little sleep (4 hours is not nearly enough after being awake for almost 2 days).

The next morning when we walked into the NICU, I could hear a baby crying and instantly knew it was Easton. It broke my heart & I decided I wouldn't be leaving him alone anymore....no matter how tired I was. That day was just spent holding him and waiting....and I was able to talk them into taking the feeding tube out so I could feed him. It was a long day.

This NICU experience was very different than my first one with Kobe. Besides having a good outcome, I was pretty involved with Easton's care. Not that I could do much for Kobe, because he was so sick & in his Isolette. But I wasn't proactive in his care & went along with everything the nurses or doctors said. I felt like I couldn't voice my concerns & pretty much felt like a child (which at 20 years old I suppose I was). But this time, I couldn't sit back and do nothing. I took the liberty to hold Easton whenever I felt the need (which we never put him down), made sure they knew I would be holding him while they fed him (even though the feeding tube required no holding), asked questions about his care, requested to speak to the doctor if I needed some answers, etc. In fact, if I wouldn't have requested his feeding tube to be removed so I could try to feed him, I don't think they would have done it--and that was the first step to seeing that he was breathing much better. Brett mentioned that he heard the nurses saying "This mom wants to do nothing (speaking of another mother with a baby in the NICU, & this one wants to do EVERYTHING." We think they were talking about me....and I felt pretty proud of myself ;).

Sunday I was to be discharged....so I had planned on just moving my stuff down to Easton's NICU room. It was a great NICU to be in. They provided free private sleeping rooms for parents, & nursing mom's even got free meals even though they weren't patients (and they had pretty good food. They had a full menu that I got to order from & I could get as much as I wanted. I even had a steak one night for dinner...but the chocolate cake was my FAVORITE...I even took a picture because it was so yummy.) It turns out I didn't need to stay any longer. After Easton's Hep B test, circumcision (so sad), hearing test, & PKU test (he was tortured that day) they discharged him. They even took him off all the monitors early that morning so it wasn't so difficult to hold him. Such a great feeling to know that he was going home at the same time as I was! We were home by 2 O'clock Sunday afternoon.

The girls made Easton a 'Welcome Home' sign. They were so excited about it ;)


Ready to go home....so tiny in his car seat.


So cute!



The only picture I got of him with his feeding tube & monitors (that you can't see).


Oh yeah, the diagnosis was basically NASAL SWELLING. They think maybe after he was born, whoever suctioned his nose irritated it too much. Whether that is correct, who knows....we are just glad he is doing well.