When I got back to the room after recovery, Mark, Collin, my parents, Ethan, Travis, and Jenna were all waiting for me. It felt wonderful to know that my whole family was there. And Ethan was able to come and visit me, which made me so happy because up until earlier this year, no one under the age of 5 could come and visit at all-regardless of whether they were the patient's child or not (because of H1N1).
Our hospital stay was pretty uneventful overall. We had many visitors, but no squatters like we did with Ethan (my MIL and some people on that side stayed for 5 hours). The longest anyone stayed was maybe an hour or so, which allowed me to bond better with Collin. While we were staying in the hospital, both Dr. Nelson (Collin's dr.) and Dr. Teri McNelis (my dr.) came in to check on us. However, since they were not the on call dr's, we also got to know Dr. Simon (pediatrician) and Dr. Mike McNelis (Dr. Teri's husband). Dr. Mike was so kind and gentle. I felt like he really cared about my well-being, not to mention he knew about my circumstances (going in 3 weeks early, dilated to 8cm, etc.) from not only reading my chart, but also from talking to his wife. Dr. Simon, however, was very brash and had absolutely no bedside manner. She didn't come off too badly at first. On Saturday, Mark and I were still debating whether to have Collin circumcised during our hospital stay or wait a few weeks for...things to get a little bigger. She was very honest with us and said while it was our decision, she said she could perform the procedure with no problems. It would be a more sterile environment, we would have the help we needed, should any issues arise, and things were...plenty big. Even though we would've rather had Dr. Nelson do it, we decided to do the circ there.
The next day, when Dr. Simon came in to do the circ, she also came in to talk to us about Collin's weight loss. When he was born, he weighed 6 lb., 7 oz., but during our stay, he had gone down to 5 lb., 13 oz. Rather than calmly express her concerns, Dr. Simon began finger pointing at me. "You're not doing enough to help your child. These 7 or 8 minute feedings on each side ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH! He should be eating at least 12-15 minutes on each side. Do you want him to go home? Because if he doesn't start gaining weight, he's stuck here!" Wow...right? I began tearing up (because I was nursing so much better with Collin than with Ethan and because I really wanted to go home with my baby). Dr. Simon looked at me and said, "Oh, I cried at Toyota commercials when I was pregnant..." and walked out to do our son's circ. Mark and I were furious! I walked into the bathroom with my breast pump, determined to show this lady that my child was getting enough to eat. I pumped for 20 or so minutes and got 5+ oz. of colostrum. One of the nurses, Lori, came in to check on me. She had been right outside the door when all of this went down. Mark talked to her for a few minutes before I came out of the bathroom with my tubes of milk. She looked at me, looked at the tubes, and said, "Oh wow! If that's what you're feeding Collin, he'll be just fine!" I smiled. Lori recommended to me to try nursing Collin without a plastic shield (with Ethan, I had to use a shield). I did that and it worked even better. I tried to feed Collin as much as I could those last few hours (within reason, of course). We also were supplementing with formula in between, to try to get him to gain some weight.
That afternoon, the nurse, Torri, and the PCT, Julie, came in to check on me, too. They had heard from Lori what had happened and both wanted to make sure I was okay, especially Julie (she had gotten to know us when we had Ethan). They also told me that Lori had filled out a care concern form because we hadn't been satisfied with the care Dr. Simon had given us. They also gave us a free alpaca-like blanket from the hospital for our trouble. They felt bad that we had a bad experience, but I assured them that while we didn't care for our experience with Dr. Simon, it hadn't soured our entire experience. In fact, we thought our experience overall was better this time than with Ethan. They weighed Collin-he had gained 3 oz. to put him back up to 6 lb. We could go home! We packed up our millions of bags, gave Torri and Julie lots of hugs and said goodbye. Then Mark and I came home to cuddle both our boys (Dad and Ethan met us up at our house).
Since then, things have been going really well. The boys seem to get along, though it's still very early. There have been transitions, but that's another post for another day...
No comments:
Post a Comment