my favorite pic,kee in a salad bowl for a bath!
I stayed in the hospital for one more week and woke up crying one night.A very nice nurse held my hand as I finally broke down and sobbed.After that night I just could not stay in the hospital one more moment listening to all the crying babies around me. Mine was downstairs, in a little box with a round window, could the nurses hear him crying?.....So my great Doctor Rob who has become a friend signed my papers of freedom and I was out of there. I healed much faster at my home and was feeling better in 4 days time. All this time we went to the S.C.N every day. We lived at the hospital for 3 months from sunup to sundown and later. The S.C.N. is open 24 hours for parents. We never wanted to be away from him for even a second. After 1 1/2 months at Childrens they transfered him to a Hospital closer to our home. As parents we had to start all over again, with new nurses, new ways to do things, new protocal and I found this very hard for a few weeks. I usually went home crying for little things like, they bathed him differently, they changed him wrong, they feed him differently, ect.. Stupid things, but when you get into a routine that makes your child live and you feel confident, then suddenly everything is different, you just feel like the boat is sinking. He still had brady's at the new hospital so he still had all his wires but they removed the feeding tub and he had a tube they inserted down his mouth when they feed him.He ate 5cc every 2 hours that is about 1 1/2 teaspoons. It went up to 3 tablespoons and ect. The more he could eat, the more he gained, the more we got excited. When they took him off all the heart and breathing monitors I was terrified-
I can not tell you how you begin to live every day by looking at those machines. Those machines are keeping your child alive, they beep you jump, the nurses jump, the whole room jumps. You don't sit there and watch your little one, you sit there and pray the machine doesn't beep, that the red lights don't stop flickering. You hate it one moment and you love it the next and it gives you the peace of mind you need. You find your tired sad depressed eyes straying every other minute to just take a peek at the red light, the count of the numbers...How many heart beats..
So they took all the machines away the wires were gone, he looks like a real baby..What do I do now?..We learned to watch his color,to see his chest rise & fall. I walked around the room with him for the first time and showed him the sunset through the windows. I breast feed him in the backroom, just me and my son. I was scarred to death.
When you have a preemi baby, that child for the time it stays in the hospital belongs to all the nurses and the doctors. They are keeping your child alive but mostly the nurses, who feed, change, play with, monitor and give much love. We were very lucky we had wonderful nurses in both hospitals but we became very close to the smaller staff at Hospital. After the system became familiar to us we relaxed and I started to trust and respect his nurses. They were lovely and they were there for us as much as his needs. I became known as the mom that was always telling them to "roll him because I did not want him to have a pointed head!" which many preemi's have. I can not stress to you enough how much you rely on your nurses. They are the go between for you and the Doctors, to other parents,and yes even for your relatives if you need to be protected. Oh you do get one or two airheaded nurses and we did! but the good regular nurses know who is bad among them and just tells you to forget what ever was said to you. PLEASE cont.with me click next
S.C.N.2 weeks old
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