A Season In Hell
It’s been an up and down 24 hours.
We returned to hospital last night to await surgery this morning. At first, Zen Baby didn’t seem to harbour any ill-will towards the pajama-clad ladies, but then again, they remembered her and basically left us to ourselves to settle in for a few hours.
Then the saga of the iv started. First, the nurses in the Children’s wing (and by nurses, I mean 3 of them, plus me) attempted to draw blood from Zen Baby and reinsert her iv. No go on either count. So, in the interest of not traumatising the baby more than need be, we decided to wait awhile and ask the Nursery wing nurses to do it. Since Zen Baby wasn’t going to be allowed to eat after 12 am (and I’ll detail how I feel about that in a minute), and would definitely be wanting to nurse after her ordeal, I began asking around 10 pm when this show would get on the road.
So we brought Zen Baby to the nursery where the lovely nurses (again, 3) assured me that they would be ‘in and out; no problem”. Uh, no. After a 20 minute wrestling match, they did manage to draw enough blood for her blood work, but no iv.
The nurses then thought to leave it for the surgeons to do in the morning, assuring me she wouldn’t dehydrate after a few hours of being N.P.O. (hosptial speak for no food). Given we were looking at 10+ hours, I begged to differ. So they called the Dr to change her fasting time (which apparently, for a bf baby of her size, really only needs to be 5 hours ). But, it’s easier for him if every order is written for midnight; that way he doesn’t have to, oh, do his job and keep track, so he declined to make the change.
So, they went up a skill level and had the pediatric critical care nurses come to do her iv. I agreed only on the condition that they got one shot and one shot only. If it didn’t take, the Dr. was going to have to come up and work out another solution with a very pissed off and protective mommy. This time I demanded to nurse her while they did the stick, and it went ok.
But the poor little thing was poked in *every* major vein last night: both sides of her head, both hands, both elbows, and both feet. I want to sob just thinking about it.
So then came the fun job of not letting the co-sleeping, breastfed baby with the abnormally small stomach capacity not eat for 10 hours. Fortunately, Grampa came up to the hospital around 3 am and we spelled off–I would cuddle her until she demanded to nurse, then Grampa would take her away to settle her.
Then it was finally time for the surgery.
I have to say, they did not instill me with confidence this am.
First off, I had been told that I would be allowed to go into the OR with her until she was sedated, and that someone would orient me to OR procedure as a prequisite before hand. Despite waiting aound for over an hour on our discharge day, and periodically asking about it over a 2 hour period this am, that never happened. But you know what? They were clearly insane if they thought they were taking my baby anywhere without me. They did give in on that one, and I was gowned and present when they sedated Zen Baby. And despite the face mask, it was far less traumatic (for me, anyway) than any procedure thus far.
But they also forgot to send the order for her preop antibiotics to the pharmacy, so didn’t have them when the time came for administer them, thereby causing a small panic.
And they couldn’t figure out how to put one side of her crib down. Not exactly the display of competence you want to see before you hand your baby over for major surgery.
So Zen Baby is now undergoing her surgery and it will be at least 3 hours before I know anything. Hopefully, someone will update this tonight if only to give you guys a quick heads up as to how things have gone.
Please, more than ever today, keep those prayers and vibes coming. Because I’ll tell you a secret: For the first time in days, I’m really, really scared my baby might die.