Tuesday, June 13th
Squish is born! So.Much.Love. for this tiny little person!
Wednesday, June 14th
After one night in the hospital, we're ready to be discharged and head home! Squish had been spitting up a good bit of mucus, so our pediatrician decided to wait and do his circ in his office the following Wednesday. And we had to wait until Squish is at least 24 hours old to do a few of the newborn screening/tests that needed to be done. He passed his hearing test, his O2 test, completed his newborn screening, and had bilirubin labs drawn. We had to wait about an hour on the bilirubin results before we could officially head home.
The nurse came in to tell us Squish's bilirubin test came back at 7.7. Apparently if it were 8 or higher, I believe she said they wouldn't have discharged us! Thankfully we had the all-clear to be discharged, with the caveat that we needed to bring Squish in to the pediatrician's office the following day to do a repeat bilirubin test (this test = a heel stick. It's not fun for baby or mommy.). We made our appointment, and were finally ready to leave the hospital.
Thursday, June 15th
We had a ROUGH night at home Wednesday night into Thursday morning. They always say a newborn's second night is always way worse than their first night. YAY. But we survived, and I was able to take Squish to the pediatrician for his bili check.
Unfortunately, his bilirubin went up from 7.7 to to 14.2, obviously not trending in the right direction. It wasn't high enough to warrant phototherapy, and the pediatrician said to keep feeding him as frequently as possible, and to let him sit near a window in the sunlight for about 20 minutes a few times a day. Easy peasy!
In the meantime, I was struggling a bit with the breastfeeding. I won't go into a ton of detail, but let's just say Squish was having issues with his latch, which was causing a good amount of pain for mommy. To help address this, I scheduled an appointment with the Lactation Consultant at the pediatrician's office for Friday afternoon.
Friday, June 16th
Friday afternoon, I arrived at the pediatrician's office for my lactation consultation. It went really well, but I didn't feel like we had necessarily done anything that would immediately resolve the issue. I am hardcore in favor of exclusively breastfeeding (and/or pumping) without using formula (personal preference - no shame to those who choose that route!), so it's really important to me that we are successful with nursing, milk supply, weight gain, etc.
While we were there, the pediatrician peeked at Squish and decided he'd like to see another bilirubin test, and asked us to bring him in on Saturday for another check. Well, okay then! Because three days of doctor visits in a row sounded like a great idea! LOL.
Saturday, June 17th
It's Saturday. We were discharged on Wednesday, and so far, we have spent every.single.day. visiting our beloved pediatrician's office. LOL! We checked Squish's bilirubin and it had only increased from 14.2 to 15.1. This indicated it was starting to slow down and eventually would start falling back into the normal range. What a blessing! I was so glad to hear this because it was really upsetting to continually do heel sticks on my sweet boy!
Sunday, June 18th
We had our first day at home as a family of SIX without any doctor appointments or hospital visits! Hurray! It was a wonderfully relaxing Father's Day!
Monday, June 19th
We had our second day at home without any medical visits or issues! Hurray for this new trend!
Tuesday, June 20th
We went back to the pediatrician's office for what would (hopefully) be our final heel stick and bilirubin check. I was so happy to see that it finally went DOWN to 13 from 15.1! Yippee!! This meant Squish was finally in the clear with his jaundice issues.
While we were there, the pediatrician was taking a closer look at my sweet boy's "boy parts" in preparation for his circumcision we had scheduled the following day. Unfortunately, he discovered an issue with his little parts, and determined he would not be able to perform the circ. In fact, he wanted to refer us to a Pediatric Urologist for further testing, treatment, and possible surgery.
WHAT?!!
That was NOT what I expected to hear!!! I was so surprised and scared and frustrated... my poor boy! He doesn't deserve to go through all of this! I've been researching his diagnosis and it seems that it won't be able to be addressed until he's at least 6 months old. And it will most likely require surgery under general anesthesia. Again, NOT what a mommy wants to hear concerning her week-old newborn baby! At least my little guy didn't have any idea what his doctor and I were discussing... such a peaceful little squishy-squish!
On Tuesday, we also celebrated little Squish's ONE-WEEK BIRTHDAY!!!
Wednesday, June 21st
Oh, Wednesday. How I loathe thee! Wednesday morning was our first day in SEVERAL days that we did NOT have a doctor's appointment. SCORE! However, Squish woke up to eat around 7:30 AM, and I put him back in his pack n' play when he was finished. I got up almost 3 hours later to check on him, and noticed a dark colored stain on his sheet. I turned on the light and looked closer to see that there was bright red blood mixed with spit up on the sheet right next to his mouth. My baby spit up bright red blood!!! I'm no medical expert, but I know that can NEVER be a good thing. I immediately texted my mom and sister (both nurses) to confirm that I needed to take him in to see the pediatrician. They agreed.
At the pediatrician's office, we discussed ALL of the possible causes for the bloody spit up. One of the most common was that the blood actually came from me while he was nursing (I told you it's been a painful process and that his latch was NOT that great). However, it wasn't a guarantee because the blood was bright red, there was a good amount of it, it appeared a few hours after he finished eating, and there had been ZERO indication of ANY blood in his milk during my many many pumping sessions. So the doctor continued to think through all of the possible scenarios that could have resulted in his spitting up blood.
One of the areas of concern he wanted to rule out was possible gastrointestinal issues, such as Intestinal Malrotation (this would result in surgery to repair). He made a call to his buddy at the main downtown hospital, who happened to be THE MAN over all of Pediatric Radiology, and confirmed that he would be able to get us in as soon as we were able to get there. You can imagine how scary this whole process was! Everything happened so fast, and before I knew it, I was calling hubs, making arrangements for my sister to keep the kids so hubs could meet me downtown, and loading up Squish in the car to head to the hospital.
Within 20 minutes, I found myself at the main downtown Children's Hospital for an Upper GI study for Squish to exclude possible issues such as hematemesis and intestinal malrotation. My sweet, sweet boy! After the experiences we've had with Chase, it was all too surreal to find myself at the hospital for an unexpected test to rule out a major complication. I couldn't stop the tears from flowing as I waited in the patient registration area before going back to Radiology.
Thankfully, sweet Squish cooperated for the test (this was a blessing considering it had been over FOUR HOURS since he'd eaten... he needed to be hungry enough to swallow the barium mixture for the test), and the Radiologist determined there were NO GI ISSUES with our baby! Praise the Lord! This was SUCH a HUGE relief to my mama heart!!!!!
We left the hospital and I sat in my car, finally able to feed my sweet baby, thanking God over and over for the positive news. Of course, we still didn't have a reason for the bloody spit up, but we are at the point of assuming it came from me when he had nursed the night before. I spoke with my Lactation Consultant, and she suggested I take a break from nursing and just exclusively pump for a day or so to give myself a chance to heal. We scheduled an appointment for me to come in to see her on Friday for another look at Squish's latch and to see what we need to do to make breastfeeding work better for both of us.
Thursday, June 22nd
Today! We have ZERO plans to see doctors, Lactation Consultants, Radiologists, or any other medical professional! In fact, we're planning a little family outing together... our first time leaving the house together as a family of SIX! We couldn't BE more happy to finally get a chance to settle into our new normal... 9 days after our little Squish's arrival!
Thank you to all of our family, friends, and followers for checking in on us, praying for us, bringing meals to us, and just loving on us as we expand our sweet family! And my apologies to any of you who know us personally who may have discovered that I deactivated my Facebook account and am no longer using Snapchat or Instagram. I decided that my focus should be on my family at this time, and not on the world outside of our four walls. That may sound selfish, but for me, it's just what I need to do. I don't want to waste time that I could be spending with my family on my phone checking in to see what everyone else is doing. I love y'all -- really, I do! But this time with my family is just too precious to me right now. And it's important to me to document all of our happenings on the blog here as I have done for my previous three littles, so giving up Facebook is providing me with the time I need to do just that. This blog post right here that you're reading is proof! :) I am still posting random musings and photos on Twitter, so be sure to follow me there for updates, pics, and links to new blog posts!
Hugs!!!
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