Lord B entered the world on Jan 17th at 9:37am. He emerged quietly thanks to a mouthful of amniotic fluid. At the warming table he scored an 8 at the one minute apgar and a 9 at the 5 minute apgar. He weighed 4 lbs. 13.4 oz. and measured 18 inches. They showed him to me while I was still on the table and then they took him to the nursery for his bath and evaluation.
Turns out that aspirated amniotic fluid kept him in the level 2 nursery in an incubator for 6 days. He came home on the seventh. The first day he was grunting and laboring to breathe, so they put in an IV for fluids and an oxygen tube to aid his breathing. They monitored his oxygen level with a little sensor taped to his foot. The oxygen tube broke my heart. It pulled at his skin where it was taped to his cheeks and I always thought I was hurting him when I held him. The second day he was still breathing quickly, but he wasn't grunting anymore. We used Kangaroo Care which is skin to skin contact to help him stabilize his body temperature during those first days. He couldn't stay warm outside the incubator.
I was finally able to nurse him on the fourth day when he came off the IV. Around the 5 day mark he was jaundiced, so they adding bili lights to the incubator and covered his eyes with a little mask. Eventually it irritated the bridge of his nose, so they tried variations on the mask to avoid skin breakdown. Then at the end of the 5th day he came off the oxygen and managed to keep his O2 stats at normal levels overnight. That was the end of the oxygen tube! On the 6th day he came out from under the bili lights and the next morning they were able to take him out of the incubator. We gratefully took him home shortly after.
Welcome to the family, Lord B!
No comments:
Post a Comment