Donovan's Early Adventures

When you deliver a 10+ lb. baby, you just don't expect to spend any time anywhere near the NICU. But we did...

Donovan was a champ the first night we had him - slept great, ate great, hardly cried, etc. But the second night was kind of a different story. Sure, he was a champ all day, was kind enough to sleep through our 'last night' dinner, and was awake and charming for our friends (the only ones who came to visit - so they TOTALLY win the prize!). But when Donovan got his exam that evening, he was breathing kind of heavy. Not SUPER heavy, but more breaths per minute than is ideal (they look for about 40, get panicked at about 100, and he was in that gray are of about 70 breaths per minute). The pediatric nurse strongly encouraged us to let her take him to the nursery for further evaluation. She said he'd be back within an hour, but then he wasn't. So Mike and I did what any parents would do - we went looking for him.

We made our way to the nursery (which they make a big effort to keep people out of, for obvious security reasons) and found our boy. He was in a warmer, with all of these little probes on him, each probe with a wire hanging off of it and connected to a monitor. It was really, really awful to see my tiny baby, barely 24 hours old, hooked up like that.

They monitored him in the nursery for several hours, mostly while I watched him. They did send us away for a little while - they sent me to pump while they inserted a feeding tube through his nose, because they were afraid that if he nipple ate (whether from breast or bottle) that he would aspirate milk. That would be bad. Of course, I was so upset that I couldn't pump (well, I could pump, but nothing came out). Thus my baby had to have some formula... fed through a tube in his nose :-(.

We sat in the nursery until nearly 3 a.m. I did a lot of kangaroo care (skin to skin) holding to try to get Donovan to regulate his breathing. That would work for a little while, and then it would spike again. While in there, they took a few chest X-rays, talked to the on-call pediatrician, brought in the nurse practitioner, and took a bunch of labs. They also took a culture to make sure he didn't have an infection of any kind. Most of the labs came back normal, but they did spot some fluid in his lungs in the X-ray (which could be nothing). They also observed a heart murmur when listening to his heart. They decided that he needed to be kept in the NICU overnight for closer observation, and also to start on an antibiotic in case there is an infection (infant infections grow and spread quickly, so they don't wait for the culture to grow before starting a weak course of medicine).

We walked him down to the NICU (with the nursery nurse), talked to the nurses in there and they pretty much kicked us out. They made it very clear that they were 'open' and that we were welcome to spend as much time as we wanted around the clock except for shift change. But they also made it very clear that if they weren't making me get my rest then they were not doing their jobs completely. So I went back to my room, pumped, gave the milk to my nurse to deliver to the NICU and went to bed. Shift change happens from 6:30 to 8, so we opted to wait until after 8 to go see our little guy so we wouldn't have to be kicked out at shift change. Plus we knew on an intellectual level that we needed our sleep.

So we ate our breakfast when they delivered it (treated the delivery as our 'wake up call'), washed up and wandered to the NICU. I wanted to nurse Donovan, but he was still breathing really fast and wouldn't latch on. Since they gave him my expressed milk overnight, Mike got to 'feed' him through his feeding tube. SAD. But we sat with him for a little while.

On our way back to our room we bumped into the lactation consultant who was coming to see us to make sure we were good on nursing. When we told her our problems in the NICU, she offered to come by for our next feeding in there. So that was nice. She did help us latch on, and helped build Donovan's nursing confidence.

In the mean time we showered, packed up, dressed, etc. Even though we were supposed to 'check out' by 11, our nurse told us we could hang on to the room and still have lunch delivered to us because of our circumstances, so that was nice. We still pretty much packed up and got ready to go.

Like I said, our 11:30 feeding went better - we had the lactation consultant and we were able to feed Donovan well. We put him to sleep, went back to our room to eat our lunch, brought our stuff down to the car and went to sit with Donovan. Mike and I both napped on and off in uncomfortable chairs until 2:30 and it was time to nurse Donovan again. I nursed him and then we left. We had to get home and spend some time with Jocelyn, and being there next to Donovan wasn't doing much for him. He was mostly sleeping, mostly stable, and in good hands.

We went home, I pumped for the 5:30 'feeding' and got back to the hospital for the 8:30 feeding. I brought Nancy with me this time, so she could see and hold Donovan. We took turns holding him until his 11:30 feeding. Then we went home for the night. I needed some real sleep, and again, Donovan was in good hands. They did tell us that he had really stabilized, and that if all went well we could take him home at 3 p.m. the next day. At that point the culture would have had 36 hours to grow something, which is just enough time to see something. So that would be a good time to bring him home.

I was back at 8:30 the next morning. I got up early enough to cuddle Jocelyn, grab a shower and feed Jocelyn breakfast (at least start her on her breakfast). Mike got up with me and we headed out to the hospital to feed Donovan. When we got there they said he had done great all night. Totally stable breathing, ate well from a bottle (feeding tube was GONE!) and getting ready to come home with us. I nursed him at 8:30 then Mike and I grabbed some breakfast at the cafeteria (there is a deep discount for families with babies in the NICU, which was really very kind of them, but we would have eaten there anyway since we didn't have to leave the building).

Once we got back to the NICU we were exhausted, so we napped in the chairs again. Donovan over-slept his 11:30 feeding and didn't wake up until after 12:30, at which point he ate really well. And Mike and I had taken some really hard naps. At that point we grabbed lunch and went back to the NICU for Donovan's discharge instructions. There was stuff to read, verbal instruction to listen to, and stuff to sign. Then Donovan got his last dose of antibiotic, and we were able to take him home!

It was just amazing to bring our baby home! I'll write a separate post about his first few nights and Jocelyn's reaction. But I want to keep this post about his health.

Donovan's first trip to the pediatrician was great - he looked and sounded great! His breathing was still a bit fast, and the murmur was still there, but he did well. The pediatrician wanted us to go to a pediatric cardiologist to get the murmur checked out. If it was isolated, she would not have been concerned, but since there were the breathing problems she wanted to cover her bases.

At that appointment, we had some mixed experiences. The nurse who did the ECG had no bedside manner. She kept telling us to keep the baby still (yeah, because you can stop a newborn, less than a week old, from squirming) and asked us several times if we had a pacifier to keep him still / settled. That was also awful, because it's terrible to see all of those leads and wires attached to your tiny baby. I nearly cried.

Once it was time to see the doctor, things were better. He was very nice. He was very gentle while he listened to Donovan's heart, and he used some other equipment to look at Donovan's heart (it looked like an ultrasound, but they called it an echo). He saw / heard the murmur and was not concerned about it. He said it's common for newborns to have that type of murmur, since it's how the heart works while in the womb. Blood flow changes on birth, since the blood gets oxygen via different means in utero vs. in life. He described the blood flow in a way that made a lot of sense to me - he explained it the way an engineer would. I should mention that his background was mechanical engineering and he went to Georgia Tech! So I do have total confidence in him because I know he is very smart. And, let's face it, mechanical engineering is a great undergrad major if you plan to become a cardiologist. Anyway, he said it should resolve itself on its own.

I still plan to send him my father's coroner's report, so that he is fully aware of all of the congenital heart issues. But overall, despite his rocky start, it looks like my little boy is healthy and doing great. Still, though, you have no idea how hard you realize you fall in love with your babies until you think there could be something wrong. It's really amazing.