Scary News

After the traumatic labor experience I was happy just to rest with my new little guy. They brought him into the recovery room and he nursed from me like a champ. Then we both went to get cleaned up and he was brought back around 4pm to eat. This time was a little more difficult but he still latched on and knew exactly what to do. Then we cuddled for awhile. I sent him back to the nursery so I could get some rest. They would bring him back to me about every 3 hours to eat. Around 1 am I asked my nurse to go get him for me. She came back at 2 am with a doctor and no baby.
The pediatrician informed me that Marcus had started to vomit a bright yellow mucous that was blocking his airways. It was making it extremely difficult for him to breath and his heart rate would drop. They didn't know what was causing it so he had been moved to the NICU. I was still stuck in bed so i couldn't go see him. My nurse was a godsend and got me out of bed and walking around 5 am so that by 8 I could go visit him. He had a tube down his throat pulling the mucous out of his stomach, he had an IV feeding him, and he was jaundiced. It was so scary just being in that nursery with all of the sick and preemie babies.
Marcus spent 2 more days in that NICU until they realized that the hospital didn't have all the equipment needed to do all of the tests they needed to do. He was then transfered via ambulance to the Cleveland Clinic Pediatric Intensive Care. Again my nurses were a godsend and got me discharged 3 hours later (a day early) so that I could be with him. At the clinic they did tests on his stomach, upper GI tract, lower GI tract, and lungs. Everything seemed pretty normal so it was a waiting game at that point. Lorenzo and I spent most of the day at the hospital. By day 4 they started to give him a little bit of pedialite to see if his stomach could handle it. After that they moved on to formula in extremely small amounts. By day 5, they had taken out his IV and were giving him 2 ounces of formula every 3 hours. We were told he could be discharged the next day if he kept everything down. I prayed all day and night that he would be able to.
When he was 6 days old we got to bring him home! The doctors never found out what caused the vomiting or the mucous. We were told to just keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary. After such a rough beginning, we were relieved to get him home and get into a "normal" routine.