♥ Logan's Hospital Story ♥
Tuesday 4/13
We didn't to bed until around 3:00 am. But by 7:00 am, we were both awake (thanks to the nurses who were always checking on me) and we were dying to spend sometime with our baby!! So Adam went down to the nursery to get him. I was still kind of out of it, and hadn't gotten out of bed yet. So we just spent sometime alone, just the 3 of us. I wanted to unwrap him and look him over!! I had barely gotten to hold him yet! I got to feed him for the first time. And he was so eager to eat!! He sucked down half the bottle in no time, before I could even realize how much he had ate! Then he proceeded to spit most of it back up all over Mommy ;)
Grandpa and Grandma Diane came to visit, and then the nurse (Cassie) came to take you to get your hearing screening done. We were expecting a lot more visitors (Grandma, Melody, Brody, Grandma and Grandpa Tupa, Auntie Jen and Uncle Patrick). So he left to do that, and I had a nurse come help me get out of bed for the first time. I sat in the chair in our room for a while, it was nice to be out of that bed!! Adam and I just hung out in our room, and eventually the visitors we were expecting started to trickle in. I was so excited to see Melody and Brody!! I missed them so much!! I am not away from Brody very much, so any time I am, I miss him like crazy!!
Everyone was there, but Logan still hadn't come back from the nursery, so Adam went down to get him or see what was taking so long. When he got there Nurse Cassie and the hospitalist Dr. Niermann were looking him over. They said they had noticed he was breathing rapidly. His breaths per minute were around 120, and they want them below 60. He also was showing that he might not be getting enough oxygen in his blood. So they decided that they were going to transfer him up to the Special Care Nursery.
Adam came back to our hospital room with Dr. Niermann, and Nurse Cassie stayed in the nursery with Logan to get him ready to be transferred. When I saw Adam come in with the doctor, and not Logan, I was terrified. I knew something had to be wrong. Dr. Niermann explained to me what was going on and that they were going to transfer him. He said his symptoms sounded like Transient Tachypnea of the Newborn, or TTN. Which is basically when some newborns have trouble transitioning to life outside of the womb. It is caused when the newborn doesn't get all the fluid out of their lungs when they are born. They wanted to do an x-ray, and some lab test to check for fluid on his lungs, infection, and other things.
I will never forget that moment. I started crying instantly. I just got my baby, and they were taking him away from me. He wasn't going to be in my room anymore. He could possibly have something seriously wrong with him. Was he going to be ok? I felt helpless. I couldn't do anything to help him, I couldn't even barely walk!!
They told me we could go up with him as they transferred him to the Special Care Nursery, and I said I couldn't walk yet. So they got me a wheel chair, and Adam wheeled me down to the nursery where Logan was with Nurse Cassie. My mom and Patrick were in our hospital room with us when Dr. Niermann came in, but everyone else was down by the nursery looking at Logan through the windows.
I did not want Melody to see my crying, or to see that they were transferring him. I didn't want to scare her. And no one else knew what was going on yet. Adam and I went into the nursery and I tried to keep my head down, because I didn't want Melody to see my crying and I didn't want to look at anyone else. I don't know why, but I just wanted everyone else to go away. They all wanted to know what was going on, but I didn't want to explain it. We were sad that no one was going to get to hold him, or get to see him up close. Adam pointed him out to Brody and he jumped out of his arms and ran to the nursery door and tried to go in and get Logan.
This part is kind of a blur. Adam explained to everyone what was going on, and Nurse Cassie got everything ready and we headed up to Special Care with Logan. We went up one floor to the 7th floor. They had to buzz us in to Special Care, and they moved him over to a space and transfer him from his little bassinet to an isolette. Nurse Cassie explained everything that was going on to his new nurse (I wish I could remember who was there that first day, but I can't. I remember all the other nurses, but that first day is such a blur). I just sat back a little ways in my wheel chair, silently crying and watching them attach all these things to my poor baby boy who wasn't even a day old. Some people from radiology came and did an x-ray, and then some people from the lab came and drew blood for some tests.
Dr. Neirman wanted to start him on antibiotics as a precaution. The nurses had a really hard time getting an IV started on him. His blood would clot as soon as they stuck him, and it was hard to find veins because he was a little chubby. It was sad to watch. But then we got word from Dr. Nierman that his labs and x ray had come back clear, they didn't see any fluid on his lungs, or signs of infection. So he decided we could hold off on the antibiotics so we wouldn't have to poke him anymore.
I don't know how long we sat there. I didn't want to leave him. I was in such a daze, and I realized it was nearly 7:00, and I hadn't eaten dinner yet. So we went back down to our room to eat dinner. I called to order my dinner, and they told me that it was past the time for dinner. It was just one more thing on top of what was going on. So we decided that we could order dinner from a nearby resturant and have it delivered. Nurse Cassie came by to check on me. I had been up in the Special Care Nursery and had missed some of my meds, and checks that they do on me. She asked if I had eaten yet, and I told her what happened when I called. She said that they should have called her if I hadn't ordered, and they hadn't. She was pissed, so she called the kitchen and they said they would send up something. (which ended up being hot turkey sandwhich with gravy. Yum!)
After we ate, we went back up to see Logan for a little bit. They took him out of the isolette, and I got to hold him for a little while and snuggle with my little guy.
But Adam and I were running on 3 or 4 hours of sleep, so we left him up with the great nurses, and went back down to get some sleep.
It had been the most eventful and emotional 24 hours in my entire life.
Wednesday 4/14
This morning they did more lab work. This time a test that looks at a protein called CRP, came back elevated from the day before. Dr. Nierman said this could be a sign of infection, so they needed to start him on antibiotics. It took a while, but the awesome nurses finally got an IV started in his hand.
We could bring in 2 visitors a day in to the Special Care Nursery to visit. Today he got to meet Christy and his big sister Melody.
Great-Grandma also came up to the hospital today. She didn't go up to see him, but spent some time with Mommy and Daddy.
We just spent most of the day hugging and snuggling with him. We looked forward to his feeding times, because we would come up and change his diaper, help with take his vitals, and feed him his bottle. It felt good to be able to do something for him. It felt weird to sit down in our hospital room without him.
Thursday 4/15
Today he got 2 more doses of antibiotics. We just spent the rest of the day watching his breathing. We spent as much time with him as we could. We wanted him to know we were Mommy and Daddy, even if he had to stay in the Nursery and be taken care of by the nurses.
Auntie Jen and Uncle Patrick came up to meet him today.
We knew I was getting discharged the next morning. We were hopeful that he would get to come home with us, but we knew that wasn't likely since he was still having periods of rapid breathing.
Friday 4/16
We went up and spent some time with him right away in the morning, we didn't expect them to let us take him home with us today, but were still a little hopeful in the back of our minds. Then we started to get Mommy ready to be discharged.
While we were getting things together, Dr. Nierman came into our room and told us that his breathing was looking better and his CRP level was back down. So they were going to let him come home with us! We were beyond happy!!!
So we started to pack up our things, and got his car seat and going home outfit ready. We went up and cuddled him and told him that he was about to come home and meet the rest of his family. We were just waiting for Dr. Nierman to do his discharge paperwork.
While we were waiting in our hospital room, Dr. Nierman came back in to talk to us. He said they had noticed that he was still having periods of rapid breathing. They didn't feel comfortable sending him home anymore. They wanted to keep him in the hospital and do another x-ray, some more lab work, and a EKG.
We were crushed. We were so excited to take him home. We never expected we would have to leave the hospital without him. But we knew that if he wasn't better, the hospital was the best place for him to be, so we could figure out what was wrong, and make him better.
The nursery had some rooms where parents can stay over night. We were hopeful that he would get to come home the next day, so we planned on staying at the hospital that night with him. We really did not want the leave the hospital without him.
So we packed our things, and stored our things with the nurses and went up to be by his side while he got his EKG. It was scary for us to watch our little baby get all of these tests done.
After the EKG, we went down to to get some dinner. While we were downstairs, Dr. Nierman called me. They had the results from the x-ray and EKG. He said this x-ray showed that he had pneumonia =(. He said that Logan would need 7 days of antibiotics (since he had already had 2 days, he only needed 5 more). It was so scary to think our poor little guy had pneumonia! But it was nice to have an answer to what was going on, and to know we could fix it with medicine.
They EKG also showed a couple issues, that weren't related to his breathing problems. He said it showed he had a bicuspid aortic valve. Which meant instead of 3 valves on his aorta, he only has 2. And it showed a coarctation of the aorta. Which meant that there was a narrowing in part of his aorta. The cardiologist, Dr. Hahn, said that it wasn't something that needed attention right now. She said that we would need to follow up with her, and she would come talk to us tomorrow.
So we went back up to see him. The awesome nurses got his IV started after only a couple tries, and they got his antibiotics started. We spent some time snuggling and then we had to go. We decided to not stay at the hospital. We thought it would be better to stay at Grandma's house so we could be close to him, but still spend time with Melody and Brody. We had only packed enough for a couple days, so we needed to go home to get some things, and then we were going to come back and see him in the morning.
We were so sad when we had to leave the hospital without our baby boy. It was the hardest thing we have ever had to do.
Saturday 4/17
When we got to the hospital in the morning, the cardiologist, Dr. Hahn, came in to talk to talk to us. She explained to us about his bicuspid aortic valve and coractation of the aorta. She said we would do another EKG on Monday. She said that there is a opening in the heart that closes a few days after birth, and sometimes that can cause narrowing in the aorta, and since his was already narrow, they wanted to make sure this didn't happen and that it didn't get worse. She said she thought everything would be ok, and it would just be something we would have to monitor as he grew up. So we were hopeful everything would go good.
They had to take his blood pressure on both arms and legs twice a day, to make sure he was getting good blood flow to all of his extremities (If the numbers were not similar in all of his extremities, that would show that the coarctation was causing problems). We worried every time they did his blood pressures. But so far, they were looking good.
Dr. Nierman also came to talk to us. He said things were going good with hid antibiotics, and we would just have to wait and see how he did over the weekend.
So we just spent the day snuggling and cuddling with him. We even just sat there and watched him sleep for a little while. I could have sat there all day and night, just to be there when he needed me.
Grandma Julie also came to see him today! He was wide awake when she came in, so she got to see his beautiful blue eyes! She brought Brody with her, but he was too young to come in the Special Care Nursery. But they had a lounge where parents of babies in the Special Care Nursery could relax, eat and watch TV. So he played with Daddy in the lounge. We were sad, because he still hadn't got to meet his big brother.
We were so sad again when we had to leave the hospital =(
Sunday 4/18
Today when we walked in, the first that happened was Nurse Kathy said that there were changes in his care, but emphasized that it wasn't because he was doing worse. We walked over to his bed and saw a little tube coming out of his nose. We knew that meant he had a feeding tube. Even though Nurse Kathy had just said he wasn't doing worse, we were scared. I couldn't help but cry a little when I saw it. It was so sad and scary to see our little guy with a feeding tube. One of the main things we looked forward to was feeding him, and now we wouldn't even be able to do that.
Nurse Kathy came over and talked to us, and said that they wanted him to have the feeding tube because he was getting so excited and worked up when he was hungry and while he was eating, and when that happened he would start breathing really fast. He wasn't settling down, so he wasn't getting any rest. He was trying to fight this pneumonia, so he needed to rest. They also thought he might be aspirating (meaning he would breath in some of the milk when he was eating), and they don't want that to happen anymore.
We talked to Dr. Neirman in the morning too. He said that we were going to do a swallow study tomorrow to see if he was aspirating. If that isn't the problem, they think it might be reflux. But he wants us to look into one thing at a time, so we are going to do this swallow study before changing anything else.
We spent the day holding and snuggling him. We spent a lot of time just staring at the monitor that showed his heart rate and breathing rate. And for a couple hours he had his breathing rate consistently in the 40s and 50s. We were so happy we almost cried!! Sometimes he would move and the leads on the monitors couldn't get a reading, so the display screen would blink and flash numbers. At first we would get scared any time they went off, thinking something was wrong. We eventually learned how to read the screen and knew when it was just a problem with the leads, and not something wrong with him. It was weird how accustomed we got to all the beeping and other noises in the Nursery. We got to the point where we would hear a beep from another baby, and knew what it meant by the sound of the beep.
He would really upset when it was time to eat. He didn't understand that the milk was going strait to his tummy through the feeding tube, he was looking for his bottle. So we had to hold and snuggle him with a pacifier until his tummy started to get a little full and he would settle down, so he would know he was eating. It was sad because he didn't understand how it worked. But Nurse Karen was very good at settling him down when Mommy and Daddy weren't there. All of the nurses took such good care of him.
All of his blood pressure readings were looking good again today. So that was reassuring that his heart problems were not too serious.
We had to drive home again today. Melody had to go back to school tomorrow, so we were taking her to stay with Grandma and Grandpa Tupa, and they were going to take care of her and take her to school. It was really weird to have each of my kids in a different city, with different people taking care of each them. I could only be with one of them at a time, and I always felt like I wasn't there for someone.
We knew tomorrow would be a big day! He had his swallow study and another EKG. We were hopeful that we might get some answers as to what was going on.
Monday 4/19
We got to the hospital when they were doing the EKG, so we held his hand and comforted him while they were doing that. We spent the rest of the morning cuddling with him and trying to keep him happy until you got to eat again during the swallow study.
At 12:45 the transport nurse showed up to take us over to Children's Hospital for the swallow study. He got to ride in a little bassinet down through tunnels underground over to Children's Hospital. We went in a little radiology room with a big x-ray machine in it. I almost cried when I saw it. It was still surreal that my little guy was going through all of this.
To do the swallow study they sat him up in a little chair while they fed him this liquid called barium and watched him through an x ray machine. We could see on the screen the x-ray of him sucking and swallowing. It was scary but interesting at the same time. The radiologist saw him aspirate some of the barium. He was also pooling it in the back of his throat. So they added some baby rice cereal to the barium to thicken it up, and they fed him some of that and watched him again. After a little bit of eating that, he aspirated again, and was still pooling in his throat. So they thickened it some more and tried again. This time he didn't aspirate any! Which was great! But he was still pooling it in the back of his throat, and they saw some signs of reflux. The Doctors said we would have to consult with a Ear Nose and Throat Doctor to make sure he didn't have anything anatomically wrong with his throat that was causing him to aspirate. Daddy carried him all the way back to his hospital bed =)
Before we left for the day, his new doctor, Dr. Wood, came and talked to us. He had lots of good news for us! He said that the cardiologist looked at his EKG and said that they don't even see the narrowing of the aorta anymore! He still has the bicuspid valve, so we will have to monitor that, but the cardiologist wasn't worried about that causing any problems right now, or maybe ever. But we were SO happy!! It was very scary to think that he had something wrong with his heart.
He also said the Occupational Therapist is going to come tomorrow and try and do a feeding with thickened formula. I was excited to talk to her and work on his feeding plan. We might get to take his feeding tube out too! We will also have a consultation with a Ear Nose and Throat Doctor tomorrow, so they can check him over and see if they can find any reason why he is aspirating or pooling. Hopefully it is just something we will watch and you will grow out of.
The last thing he said was that tomorrow he would have an x-ray so we could see how the pneumonia is doing. Tomorrow is the end of the 7 days of antibiotics, so we might be able to take his IV out tomorrow too! We thought that would be great, it looked so uncomfortable! He it in his arm, and he had to have a little board taped to his arm to keep it strait.
So tomorrow is another big day!
Tuesday 4/20
Today Daddy had to go to work, so he could save some time off for when we brought him home. So Grandma dropped me off at the hospital to come up to see him (I still had a driving restriction). When I got there I met with the Occupational Therapist to work on his feeding plan. She showed me how to mix up his formula with a food thickener to make it thicker. And she fed him to see how he would do. He did great! He ate it right down like a champ! So she wrote up his plan for the nurses and Mommy so we would know how to mix up his food, some tips to help prevent him from aspirating, and what to watch out for.
So Mommy and Logan spent the day snuggling. Right when Nurse Lorriane (one of my favorite nurses!) and Mommy were getting him ready to eat, the Ear Nose and Throat Doctors came to take a look at him. So he was pretty upset with them while they did his exam, because he was hungry! The Doctors said that they got a really good look at him, and they didn't see anything anatomically wrong with him that was causing him to aspirate. This was great news! So they think it something he should just grow out of. As he gets bigger, he should learn how to swallow better. He would have to have a follow up Swallow Study in a few weeks.
So after the Ear Nose and Throat Doctors left, Nurse Lorriane and Mommy mixed up his formula and fed him. And again he did great! He ate all 3 oz with no problem.
I missed talking to Dr. Wood, but his afternoon nurse, Marianne, had talked to him and she filled me in. He said that his x-ray came back good! So we were going to do the last 2 doses of his antibiotic this evening and then we could take his IV out! I was so happy!! It looked very uncomfortable on his arm, I'm sure he would be glad to have it off.
Dr. Wood also said that if he did good with his feedings overnight, that we might be able to take him home tomorrow!! I was so happy, I almost cried! I had to run out and update Daddy and let him know the good news.
I gave him another bottle, and he did well again! Then we snuggled and he slept until Daddy got off work and he came up to see him.
Daddy spent some time with his boy, and I showed him how we need to make up his bottles now, and we fed him one more bottle. He did a good job again!
We hoped everything went well through the night. We kept our fingers crossed, and tried not to get our hopes up too much, but would love it if we got to take him home tomorrow...
Wednesday 4/21
We were super excited about today! When we got up to the hospital, we talked with Dr. Wood. He said they planned on doing his circumcision and the sending him home!! We were so happy!! So we spent the day with him and went over his discharge information with Nurse Heidi.
At 1:00 Dr. Wood did his circumcision. When he came back, he wasn't hooked up to any of the monitors! It so amazing to see him without any cords or wires attached! It first time in over a week that we had a "cordless baby." We had to stay for hour to make sure he was doing ok afterward.
All was good after that hour! So we got him dressed in his outfit to go home! (it was a size newborn, and barely fit! That was the only time he got to wear it!). Then we packed him up and put him in his car seat and finally got out of the hospital!
It was kind of hard to say goodbye to all of his great nurses, and all the staff in the Special Care Nursery. They were all so wonderful! We couldn't have gotten through this without them. They always made us feel welcomed, and kept us informed of what was going on. They explained anything we wanted them to, and answered all our questions. And they were just the sweetest ladies in the world!
From the hospital, we went to visit Grandma and introduce him to your big brother Brody! We didn't tell Grandma ahead of time, we just showed up at her house! She was so surprised and happy!! Brody was very interested in him, but he didn't really know what to think! We were so happy they got to meet each other!
We stayed at Grandma's house for a little while, and then headed home! It was so nice to be home with ALL of our family!!
We love you Logan!!
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