Katy: Days .75-10….

 

Another long documenting post coming right up!

So, on Katy’s birthday, her family was there to visit, her older sister, her niece, brother in law, her two big brothers, her nana, both Papas, Grandma Gwen and aunties Erica and Mel.  They were there off and on throughout the day.  It was a great day, hanging out in the room with Kate, her family, and her daddy and me just soaking up time with her.

My mom and her husband Shawn (Papa Shawn) were taking care of Cooper while we were in the hospital, I need to give them a shout out because they did so much more than watch him.  They slept on an air mattress in Katy’s room so that Cooper wouldn’t be out of his comfort zone while we were gone. They cleaned our house, planted flowers, did laundry and even more that I probably haven’t noticed yet, because I’ve been the walking dead for 10 days now….  So THANK YOU! to my awesome Mama and Shawn, for everything.    I don’t know what I would do without you.

So back to Kate.  (Katy, Kathryn, Katybug, etc) Katy’s pediatrician’s office had a doctor on call the day she was born, so that doctor, was the one to actually come to check on her instead of her normal pediatrician.  We didn’t know when she’d be at the hospital to look at her, all we knew was that she’d be there sometime throughout the day.  She ended up coming while Kate was in the nursery for a check-up.  See, since I have diabetes, the hospital checks on my kiddos several times to make sure their glucose levels are ok and that they don’t have issues because their mama is diabetic.

When the doc came to tell us about Katy, she said that because of all of her bruising, she wanted to get her checked out a little bit more – so she had some blood work drawn, a CBC.  This was around noon.  They didn’t tell us anything until later that evening.  The oncall doctor came in and told us that the results were pretty serious.  Her white blood count was low and her premature cells were very high.  At the time I didn’t really understand what that meant except that she was fighting some sort of infection.  We found out later, that she the number of premature cells meant that her body was working so hard to fight the infection that she the cells didn’t have time to mature enough, and this wasn’t a good thing. 

The doctor that night said that there wasn’t much we could do at the time, just repeat the blood work and see if it came back better in the morning.  She would have to stay in the nursery all night.  We slept the best we could, which wasn’t great.  The next morning, (5/27) THE BEST doctor around (in our opinion) came to talk to us.  She is absolutely amazing.  She walked us through all of the possibilities.  Leukemia, Meningitis, a simple blood infection among others.  Lots more blood work would be done, and she’d started two types of antibiotics around midnight the previous night.  The antibiotic would be the first step in helping her heal from whatever she had.  If it were the blood infection or the meningitis, she’d have to have several days worth of medicine to heal her, then she could come home. 

It took 48 hours to get some results back and PRAISE GOD it was just the blood infection.  The infectious disease doctor said that she would need to have 10 days worth of antibiotics and then she would go home and be fine.  We were so thrilled!!!  On day three of antibiotics, they did a bilirubin test and it came back high enough that she had to be under the ultraviolet lights for an entire day.  That was the first day that I was scheduled to go home, no more nights in the hospital – so I went home to rest since I couldn’t hold her while she had to be under the lights. 

Tim was taking care of EVERYTHING at home and with Cooper after Tuesday morning.  He ran him back and forth to preschool, took care of everything at the house and did laundry, he was amazing.

Back to Kate.  Everything was smooth sailing – day in and day out antibiotics.  I stayed at the hospital again on Friday night using a Parent Overnight visit.  She slept decent that night – until she had antibiotics, around 4am.  I let her stay in there until 6 even though her antibiotics only took 30 minutes, I wanted to get a couple of hours of good rest, so that I could hang out with her until I was kicked out of that room at 9.  Then I headed home, got a couple more hours rest and showered and headed back and Aly came to visit, then my dad and Gwen did, and then Tim came and we spent some QT with our baby girl while Dad and Gwen were at our house spending time with Cooper.

The rest of Saturday/Sunday were same – just more antibiotic doses, lots of time spent out of the Continuing Care Nursery, and in a patient room with us.  I thought my butt was going to fall off from being so asleep sitting all of those days with her – but it was so nice to be able to take her out of the nursery and spend time with her.  Sunday, Tim and Andrew went golfing, so my mom came up to spend time with Cooper while I was in the hospital with Katy.  Cooper and Tim and my mom also spent quite a bit of time in the hospital with us – I had to be there at the hospital the most since I wanted to develop and establish that breastfeeding relationship.  She had finally really taken to it, thank goodness! 

Monday/Tuesday – Tim went to work and Coop to preschool while I went to the hospital all day.  When they were done for the day, they came to the hospital for awhile, then we all headed home together.  We found out on Tuesday that the nurses and doctors thought they heard a heart murmur.  It is nothing major to worry about, but they needed to do an echocardiogram just to make sure.

The echo came back ok, we just have a follow-up appointment with a cardiologist in 6 months.  The heart murmur should heal in time, it may be gone when we go to the follow-up.  We also found out that day that she would for sure come home the next day.  And that it would be early afternoon instead of late in the evening like we originally thought.  Tuesday was a wonderful day, because that meant tomorrow Katy would be home!!!

On Wednesday, on the way to the hospital, we picked up bagels and cream cheese for the nurses in the CCN as well as the AWESOME doctor that we were fortunate enough to have for our baby girl.  She was due for her last antibiotics at noon, so we hung out in a patient room with her until about 11:30, and sent her on her way back to the nursery for her last little bit of time.  We went to eat lunch in the café downstairs and then came back to pick her up.

Day 11 -

Overall, having her in the hospital for 10 days wasn’t the end of the world.  I got to spend lots of time with her each day.  I knew she was being taken care of by the best of the best.  Now that she’s home though, I do not ever want her to have to go back into a hospital for any reason.  I am loving having her home.  Our first night was rough, up and down a lot, but I’m have high hopes for a better night tonight.  We shall see!

If you stuck with me and read this entire post, I’ll give you a high five from afar, because it was long and quite wordy!  Thanks for reading, have a great evening!