My doctor did her best to release me as soon as possible so that I could be with Andre at the IU North hospital. It absolutely killed me that I wasn't with my son. It helped to know that Charles and his parents were with our son and my mom was with me. My sisters and dad were able to visit with me during the late morning/early afternoon then they went by the NICU to see Andre and Charles before they left. They weren't able to hold him but they could at least see the newest member of our family.
After I proved that I could use the bathroom, bathe myself and get up and about my doctor released me from the hospital around 5:30 in the evening. My mom went to fill my prescriptions and then we headed to IU North. By this time Charles had to head back to Lafayette to try and get a little sleep before he had to work that evening. When we arrived at the NICU it was around 7:30 and I was overjoyed to see my baby but slightly taken aback by all of the machines his little body was hooked up to. Charles and his dad had been sending us pictures while I was still at the other hospital so I knew what he was hooked up to but it was still much more scary seeing it all in person.
IU North is a Riley hospital that is located on the north side of Indy instead of downtown. This facility is simply amazing. They treat the parents, especially the super hormonal stressed out new mom, so well its unbelievable. Since I was pumping milk all of my meals were absolutely free which was such a blessing both financially and stress wise (the last thing I wanted to think about was going and getting food...especially considering I had NO appetite whatsoever). Andre was in his very own room that had a recliner and a couch thing in the corner of the room with a curtain you could pull for privacy. We had our own tv and cabinets to put our things. Charles and I were allowed to sleep in there over night but grandparents were not. They also had sleep rooms on the floor above Andre's room that had a queen size bed, night stands and a chair, a community bathroom for the three sleep rooms and even a laundry room. They even provided the detergent so that I could wash my clothes which I ended up having to do a few times! We ended up getting a sleep room all of the nights that I was in the hospital which was great for me to try and get some sleep. The nights that Charles was not working and able to stay at the hospital he slept in the room with Andre.
In the previous post I wrote about Andre's conditions as we knew them at the time. Every morning the doctors and nurses did rounds and would go over his progress/condition at that point. Luckily for us, he was improving greatly everyday. I'm not sure that I can remember every detail that happen and what exact days they happened on but this is pretty much how our week in NICU played out:
-Within a day of being in the NICU, before I even got to the hospital to see him, Andre's breathing tube was removed and replaced with the supplemental oxygen via the little tubes that go in your nostrels
-After a few days he was off of oxygen all together
-He had a feeding tube going up his nose into his stomach (it was in his mouth but he HATED it) and that was removed either Sunday or Monday and we were able to feed him bottles by mouth.
-He still had the central line coming out of his umbilical cord that was giving him antibiotics for the infection that he had. The problem was they were unsure of what type of infection it was. Since they gave me antibiotics before surgery he already had some in his system (which was a good thing) but it didn't allow any bacteria to grow in the cultures they took upon his arrival. The biggest dilemma our entire stay was WHAT type of infection he had and making sure that he got the antibiotics for long enough to cure the infection.
-They preformed TWO spinal taps on Andre to rule out meningitis (thankfully it wasn't!!!).
-After determining there was no meningitis the doctors said that he only needed the antibiotics for 7 days which meant we were heading home on Wednesday the 16th of April when Andre was 1 week old.
During our stay at the NICU I was trying to recover from my csection. I was in quite a bit of pain at the beginning even though I was taking my pain pills religiously. On Monday morning I woke up to find that my incision was infected and needed attention quickly. I called my doctors office and she got me an appointment in the afternoon and my mom was able to take me. Dr. Stephenson looked at my incision and said it was definitely infected and that a lot of the drainage I was having was from all of the fluids I was retaining from the preeclampsia. She gave me some meds and sent us on our way. I ended up needing to go to the urgent care clinic on Saturday after we got home because it was getting worse and they took cultures of the incision and gave me different antibiotics. Eventually it began to heal and is now pretty much normal.
Andre's birth was pretty traumatizing and no one knows what really caused all of it to happen. One doctor at Riley thought that either my body was making antibodies against Andre because our blood types are different or that before birth some of his blood transferred to me and that is why he was anemic. The most likely scenario is that the length of labor, stress of delivery with an infection on top of his anemia led to chaos. The doctors cant really give me the chances of this kind of thing happening again which means having more kids will need to be decided upon and discussed with my doctor. Dr. Stephenson doesn't think it would happen again but I will need time to recover emotionally before considering trying for another!!
Charles and I were hesitant to put many pictures of Andre hooked to machines on any social media at first and only shared them with immediate family. Now that he is home and doing well I am more comfortable sharing them.
I forgot to mention that he was able to get out from under the lights after about three days or so. Poor baby couldn't see!!!
