April 19, 2010 - the worst day of my life

So, I'm nursing Alexandra on Sunday night and all of the sudden she stops and (I think) is turning purple. As we all know, in the first few days, babies coloring changes a lot, so I was confused and shocked. Then she started breathing again and her mouth coloring went back to rosey red, so I knew something was wrong. We told the nurses and they said if it happened again to pull the nurse call button out of the wall and the nurses would come running to help. Well, sure enough it happened again later that night, around 11:00pm. No, I didn't pull the call button out of the wall because I was able to get her to breathe on my own, but now we knew something was wrong. The nurses took her to the nursery where they could monitor her breathing, and also monitor it when she was eating to see if they could detect something. It was even more of a sleepless night. 5:00am rolls around and my nurse took me to the nursery to bottle feed her. Her oxygen levels were still going up and down. I was on the phone with a pediatrician in our practice and we just didn't know what was wrong. We were supposed to be discharged on Monday, April 19th, but unfortunately, that as the day that Alexandra was omitted to the NICU...the worst day of my life. Yes, she was the healthiest baby in there, but not knowing what was wrong with my little peanut was heart wrenching. I was an emotional mess! After a cardio consult, chest x-ray, and a esphogus test, everything came back normal. By 2:00pm, I could breathe again and felt a huge amount of relief. They started antibiotics in case of an infection and sent some blood work out to be tested. Those were the only tests we were waiting for. After two long days, walking up and down to the NICU and being discharged from the hospital without my baby, she was allowed to come home. Basically, Alexandra was just sucking, sucking, sucking, but not breathing! So we had to train her to suck, swallow and breathe!

What a horrible experience, but our baby is healthy, just needs a little coaching! I have to say, I had AWESOME nurses in the NICU. Amazing women - thank you for getting me through those 3 horrible days!

Deja Vu - Almost 33 years later, MeMa is holding a baby in the NICU. Not her daughter this time, her granddaughter.