Worried for my son, thinking if he is a drug baby how odd it was that they were allowing me to room in with him and not monitoring him. Anxious to find out exactly what it was that had caused his problems at birth. The thoughts seemed to come 100 miles per hour. I was exhausted and I am sure not thinking straight. The nurse said if GS or I needed to talk to each other she would be our liaison. Whatever. I felt like we were being kept apart.
Around 8:00 in the morning GS came to my room. We talked. She told me she had taken an herb to bring along labor. I was upset and a little hurt finding this out now, but it wasn�t methaamphetamine. It was an herb. We talked for about an hour.
The pediatrician came in, Dr. Gass. She was very nice and examined Mitchell. I asked her about what the drugs they were saying GS had taken would/ could do to him. She said that these tests come back positive all the time and they are false. I asked her about the meconium test that was mentioned in the nursery to us by Sally and the midwife. This Dr. said this test could determine for how long through the pregnancy GS had used drugs, if at all. The pediatrician did not seem concerned about it. I asked her about saving the first meconium as Sally in the nursery had said that is very important. The Dr. didn�t seem to feel this was necessary but agreed to have a nurse �bag it�, just in case GS� test did come back with actual drugs in it. We agreed that if it came back normal that there would be no need to run this test. After the pediatrician left the audiologist and assistant came in to get Mitchell for a hearing test. When she returned I asked, optimistically how it had gone and she said not well. He failed the test. He would need to be reseen to check his hearing. She said normally that just she performs the test but because of our circumstance, which she seemed uncomfortable saying, and then said she knew nothing about what was going on, because of the circumstance she had been told to do the hearing test earlier than they normally perform it. Whatever. I know this sounds bad, but at this point I felt if he did/ does have a hearing problem, which I don�t think he does, in the big picture I didn�t/ don�t view that as hopeless. Yes, I would be sad if my son never heard his mommy, daddy, sister or wife or his own children say they loved him, but if he was born at birth this way it wouldn�t be like he had it and then it was stolen from him. Later the technician said most babies pass the second test. Then she came back in and seemed like she had been chastised for talking to me and reiterated again that �99.9%� of babies that fail this first test pass the second one. The pediatrician also said this saying that the only time a baby failed the first test and then the second test was with a baby whose family had a history or condition with hearing loss.
My new nurse, BJ, came in and told me I would need to get out of this room as there were a bunch of women in labor, I think she said 7 and only 1 postpartum room currently available. She said the baby would go to the nursery for his BCBG or something like that and then could either stay in GS� room or the nursery, but he could not stay with me. My mom got there with my daughter about this time. My daughter got to hold her baby brother for the first time and she was instantly in love. We hurriedly got out of this room and followed Mitchell down to the nursery for this test and possibly to be circumcised. |
