So Silas was born and then hauled off to the nursery. They were ready to bring him back to my room once the respiratory problems were resolved and AB fed him. Unfortunately once he ate, his blood sugar spiked and then dropped, necessitating a longer nursery stay. At that point he had his first x-ray of his chest ruling out other issues.
Finally my legs were back - or most of the way back - and I called for a nurse to help me get to the restroom and get cleaned up so I could go and see my baby boy. This nurse was THE perkiest thing I have ever met. She annoyed me. She annoyed me not in any way she could help or that she wasn't kind. She was ultra-kind, sweetest thing that ever lived - but I wanted to get down to business and get down the hallway not have Pollyanna dawdle with me in the restroom.
I was finally cleaned up and then AB walked me down the hall. We went into the nursery and scrubbed in, put our gowns on and then went over to our baby's newly assigned bay. Inside an incubator keeping him warm and nakey. They pulled him out so I could try and nurse him and hold him. I held him for about a half hour before they were anxious to get him back in the incubator. Throughout the day we went back and forth giving him a little time in the incubator, a little time for me in bed, some lunch, then back to hold Silas Ingvald Carman.
As I said in his birth story, AB had narrowed it down to two names - Silas and Roan. Silas was leading because Leif LOVED the name. He hadn't expressed interest in any name, except Silas. And he got a little teary if we mentioned that the baby's name may not be Silas. I ruled Roan out fairly quickly because Roan means "red haired". And well, with Skadi that would have flown - she was so obviously a red head at birth. Leif - once his hair came in at about age 2 - was also a red head. Though his red hair was fairly short lived and he is more sandy brown/strawberry blonde now. AB had a work friend who despised being a red head. He met Leif about age 4 and said, "red hair? That kid doesn't have red hair. Had I had that color of hair there would have never been a problem." And he forbid AB from ever referring to his son as red haired again around him.
Anyway, I couldn't name a boy after being red-headed if he wasn't! And his head showed signs of being blonde, brown and maybe a little bit of red. So Silas it was. Our other high ranking name was Espen and AB and I both have kind of wondered what happened with "Espen" after birth. I would have considered it, AB had it as his top name for so long. But it seemed to fall off our radar at the last minute.
Then the middle name. We were leaning towards Ingvald after AB's great grandfather, Ingvald Heggem, who immigrated from Norway and became a renowned boatbuilder in Seattle. His drawings are in the Smithsonian. He also was one of the founders of Ballard and no books or other documentation detailing this historic part of Seattle are complete without mention of Ingvald Heggem. Actually there was one recently and "the family" - or at least the historian of the family - has rejected it as utter crap because the family was not consulted on it.
Ingvald is less traditional, but AB and I liked that it addressed the (self-imposed) Scandinavian name requirement and the family name requirement since while Silas is very popular as a name in the Scandinavian countries right now, it is in fact Hebrew meaning "of the forest".
Silas was put on a glucose drip to maintain his blood sugar for awhile. He had little desire to nurse or to eat in general. He was diagnosed with newborn hypoglycema. Immediately I went back to those gestational diabetes yes or no discussions. My high risk doc was positive I was undiagnosed GD, while my ob insisted it just wasn't the case. You don't pass the 1 hour GD even if you are just borderline he told me. But I still wondered. And especially now. So who better to ask then the nursery nurses?
Me: "So does that mean I did have gestational diabetes?"
Nurse S: "Oh no, he's not a GD baby."
Me: "One doctor thought I may have undiagnosed GD."
Nurse S: "Oh no, particularly an unmanaged GD case. GD babies, even managed GD babies are chunky and have little rolls of fat. Silas is skinny. He is big, but 8 lbs 11 oz is not an unmanaged GD size. He is big because he is long, not because he is chunky."
Me: "Why else would he be hypoglycemic?"
Nurse S: "Actually the top reason we ever see hypoglycemic babies here is due to respiratory issues. If a baby, like yours, receives positive pressure air due to respiratory issues, they almost certainly will be hypoglycemic to varying degrees."
And sure enough, within 24 hours two other babies were born with respiratory issues (one pneumo thorax) and were both hypoglycemic.
I am not positive this completely puts to rest the GD question for me, but at least his nurses didn't believe he was a GD baby.
That first 12 hours was pretty smooth sailing and we were fairly confident that we would get the hypoglycemia issues resolved and he would move out of the nursery in the morning.
AB brought the kids to meet Silas and we had some nice family time. The kids got to scrub into the nursery and touch Silas through the portals in the incubator. Then they left.
Shortly after they left that evening Silas started vomiting. If you have never seen a newborn vomiting, you don't want to. I felt horrible watching him struggle and watching the nurses run to him and flip him over and whisper to him. He was quickly confined to the incubator and I was told to go back to my room to sleep for the night. My ob stopped by and came into the nursery begging me to let him give me something so I could sleep. I assured him I would be able to sleep, that I didn't want to be sedated. He finally let up and said he would check in with me in the morning.
As I was getting ready to leave Nurse Sarah called her counterpart Nurse Donnata over to listen to his chest. "I think Baby Carman has a heart murmur," she said.
Sure enough, Nurse Donnata (who I later found out was quite knowledgeable in heart murmurs with a daughter who had one) confirmed it and they noted it. As I was leaving, (I had a hard time pulling myself away) they put a tube down Silas' throat to act as a drain and taped it to his precious little face. The tube allowed the gases that were building up in his tummy to be released and allowed them to rinse his tummy out repeatedly. I asked them what exactly they were pulling out as I looked at the contents of the rinsing syringe - they told me it was amniotic fluid and a fair bit of blood.
A quick call to the doctor to inform him of the new developments and they had an abdominal scan scheduled in the coming few hours and he was put on antibiotics.
And then I went back to my room and tried to sleep. Of course my sleep was interrupted regularly by the nurses checking on me.
It was very easy to quickly forget that *I* was also a patient. That they needed to monitor me, medicate me and take care of me too.
As soon as I got up in the morning I showered - yes, to this point, I had forgotten to shower. Then I ate breakfast and hurried down to the nursery. Silas had been confined to the incubator, stomach tube placed better, antibiotics going and in the incubator solid now. No coming out to visit. The on call pediatrician came by to tell me that the abdominal scan was normal, the blood in his stomach was likely just my blood - did I by chance have blood in my amniotic fluis? Yes, I did I told him. He had stabilized overnight, but was under close observation and at that point we were told that he would be in for at least another 2 days. Once on the antibiotics, he wasn't coming off for a couple days. They had ordered an echocardiogram to diagnose the heart condition and they would be here at any point.
I sat in the nursery, teary eyed. The list kept getting longer with issues, not shorter.
Pretty soon the EKG people arrived. The tech didn't have much to say to me, and I knew he couldn't make diagnoses. But he didn't give me the "well I would say everything looks good" impression either. They told me they would be sending the EKG to the pediatric cardiologist in Spokane and we would get a report back.
My ob came by and was surprised to find us still in the nursery. "You don't have anywhere you need to be, right?" he asked. I shook my head. "Then I can keep you as a patient for another 24 hours and then I will release you as a 'boarder mom'." As a boarder mom I would be given a room in the family birthing center, I could order food and I could come and go as needed as long as I kept the nurses and the nursery staff informed.
The coming three days slowly became a blur of walking up and down the halls to see Silas, sitting in the nursery looking at Silas - I finally got to hold him again at some point, and I can't remember when - and watching bad daytime TV. All the days just blurred together and I was feeling cheated of my precious leave time - it shouldn't be used up on me sitting in a hospital room without my baby. It should be at home with my husband. Same thing for AB - his one week of leave was full of driving back and forth, fielding the older two and fetching me food (as I was sick of hospital food).
AB would get up and get the kids on the bus. Then he would drive to the hospital and spend the morning with me and Silas. Then he would go get us lunch. Spend the afternoon with me and Silas until he needed to go home and meet the kids' bus. Then he would bring them to the hospital to see us and usually bring dinner with. Those evening visits got shorter as the kids became more accustomed to the hospital and the nursery (read, they became bored quickly and their boredom became exhausting to AB and I, who were tired and it was easier for AB to deal with them at home).
Each night, once Silas was allowed to be out of the incubator, they phoned me every 3 hours to come down and try to nurse, which usually ended up in complete failure and I was getting frustrated that my lactation consultant wasn't listening to me. It was my excuse though to sneak in some extra snuggle time, as I would hold him until someone would realize I was still there and Silas wasn't back in the incubator. He had skin to skin time with me, I was sure he wasn't freezing. But wow, they were effective at getting him on a good schedule and hopefully I don't completely kill that...
I spent the days and nights sitting in the nursery watching babies come and go and very few hang out for more than a couple hours. One day I came in and there was a 10 lbs 11 oz baby boy next to Silas. My boy looked tiny!
Silas was born on a Tuesday and by Friday he was doing well. I finally insisted after many unsuccessful nursing sessions and after reassuring EVERYONE around me that my milk will eventually come in and I am a dedicated breastfeeding mom with plenty of experience, to let me give him formula. Nurse Sandy backed me up. I said I didn't want to take him home not knowing if he could tolerate anything on his stomach, and the on call pediatrician agreed. He needed to eat formula and prove he could maintain his blood sugar before he would release him. Nurse Sandy went and retrieved a bottle of formula in seconds and had it in my hand and I relieved, sat and gave my son a bottle.
Nurse Sandy, who I had come to really like and we finally figured out she was my L&D nurse with Leif, was pushing for us to get released. She got all his release paperwork done, did footprints, hearing test and then that late afternoon went and called the on call pediatrician with news that Silas had, for 6 hours, done well with formula. The on call pediatrician said, "great, keep him overnight and make sure he does well overnight".
For all my desire to NOT be in the hospital one more day, I also was scared to death of bringing a sick baby home and having him vomit that evening. I was fine with him staying and I reminded myself I could tolerate anything for my kids and settled in for another night of being slave to the ringing phone instead of my baby's whimpers in a sleeper next to me.
At this point the respiratory issues had resolved, the hypoglycemia resolved as he was weaned off the glucose. The vomiting ceased. No abdominal issues were noted. The jaundice was mild. The heart murmur was diagnosed and recommendations for referral were issued. Things were looking up.
I got to know the nurses well during those days and quickly realized that nearly every nurse there had some hand in our care. Silas had about 5-6 different nurses and I had had more. One of Silas' nurses who had diagnosed the heart murmur gave me the inside scoop on pediatric cardiologists - basically there were none in the area. The closest was Spokane, but I really wanted to see the Seattle Children's cardiologists - they are the best. I took her recommendations to heart.
Finally Saturday morning arrived and at 9am I had our release orders. Which all would have gone great if Leif hadn't had a soccer game at 9am. So Silas and I hung out until AB, Leif and Skadi could get there about 10:30 to pick us up. Once he got there it was the quickest release ever. Nurse Sandy wanted to be the one to walk us out, and I didn't want to keep her from the nursery longer than necessary, so we hurried. And I only snapped a couple pictures along the way of Silas in his cute (if not completely poorly designed) Hanna Anderssen sweater outfit - it only had one opening at the legs and was difficult to get on him. But it was SO cute.
Finally we were all in the Sequoia, headed home. And like with the other kids, I needed a big bubble around our car. People drive like maniacs!
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