A Long Road Home...

(Sorry in advance for this long post!)


So, we thought that we were home on Monday for good... but unfortunately thought wrong.

When we were released from the hospital at the beginning of the week, Casey had jaundice and an appointment for a visiting nurse to come out on Tuesday. Amy, the nurse, was wonderful and spent a nice amount of time with us. Before she left, she took some blood from Casey to have the bilirubin levels checked.

We received a call within a couple of hours that Casey's level was up higher than when we left Virtua on Monday, so a durable medical equipment company delivered a "wallaby" to us about an hour or two later. The wallaby is (instead of a cute marsupial) a little "bili belly blanket" that we needed to wrap about Casey's stomach and keep her hooked to for at least 23.5 hours a day. (WOW!) This was only a little bump in our road, but an overwhelming experience for a hormonal mommy. (Though it was cute to see our baby look like a glow worm.)

Within two hours, Casey was ready to eat, and I was stressed to be feeding her while she had a heavy tube hanging out of her clothes and a radioactive-ish beam about her. Before Tee Jay even got the baby fully handed over to me, she had her first ever big spit up... and it was all brown with a little stringy amount of red blood.

We called the pediatrician immediately, who felt that it was probably just some old blood Casey had gotten from one of my ducts. But, if we were worried about it (and what possibly could be going on in her belly), we could head to the E.R.

We decided to drive back to the hospital, and though the E.R. staff was nice enough to get Casey out of the way of the general public, that meant we were spirited into a hot little "triage room" that worked more like a messy supply closet for folks to constantly poke in and out of for defibrillators and the like. Because of her jaundice, Casey was becoming more and more lethargic, and I was unable to properly feed her for hours of waiting for a pediatrician to see us (immodestly expressing myself into a styrofoam cup). Tee Jay and I hadn't eaten since 2:00PM that day, I hadn't brought my medications to the hospital with me, and we were becoming more and more cranky, just like our daughter.

By around midnight, Tee Jay had finally coerced a pedi nurse to begin our E.R. process, and she came in with another RN to take a heel prick and figure out the most recent bilirubin level. When they said, "We'll just put her on Mom's lap to get this done," I sort of began to black out and whispered, "I think I'm going to faint..." and was moved to a stretcher in the hallway. I was shaking, pale white, and personally feeling that I was in an emotional and physical hell.

What my husband was going through, I will never know. He now had a sick baby in an E.R. supply closet, a sick wife in the hallway, and I'm sure a helpless pit in his empty stomach.

The hospital was totally full, and because there was no room for us in the pediatric ward, the E.R. nurse finally took pity on poor Tee Jay around 3:00AM and got us specially admitted back into the Mother/Baby unit that we had been released from just the day before.

Talk about a godsend... amazingly so. The Mother/Baby nurses are trained to deal with not only healthy and sick infants, but also moms who are not nursing correctly, not handling emotions well, and not feeling like they can "make it" through a newly scary and unexpected readmission to the hospital.

Over the next day, we were coddled, cared for, and cherished (we literally felt like we were Number 1 to our nurses and lactation consultant).

Casey was placed in a isolette (one of those plastic baby cribs where your hands have to go through holes to touch the baby) with phototherapy lights on her all day (except when I would nurse), and her bili levels were checked frequently. Unfortunately, our camera was not at the top of the priority list when we drove to the E.R. on Tuesday night, so we have no pictures of this part of Casey's beginning, but it was cute. She wore little sunglasses and seemed to enjoy her first ("and ONLY," says Mommy) tanning bed experience.

Emotionally, I was feeling much better at times - but also having some seriously stressful moments. In addition to our being hospitalized with Casey, the Boudreau family had suffered an absolutely unimaginable and devastating loss this week and then I received a call in the hospital on Wednesday that a coworker had also unexpectedly passed away. For this reason, the on-call doctor from my OB practice stopped into our room, and because I personally wasn't readmitted to the hospital (just Casey was), he suggested that I get out in the sunshine and walk across the street with Tee Jay to a quick post-partum appointment. Between our loving nurses, the walk (which included just taking a moment to hold my husband's hand and realize that we were going to make it), and the talk with the doctor, I was able to work some things out in my head and really begin my recovery as well.

On Wednesday night, Casey's bili level was down to an 11, and they told us that we could take away the phototherapy lights and put her in a regular crib for the night! In the morning, not only did she NOT have too high of a rebound bili, but her level actually went down again to a 10.6 - and we were free to go home!!!

Unlike Monday (where we drove Casey over the bridge to Philadelphia with some trepidation), we were THRILLED on Thursday to pack up the car seat and go.

We're home, we're happy, and we are HEALTHY. Thank God!



(Wet hair and dopey looking parents equals sheer happiness to be home!)