Baby Update 6.25.11 (5 Days Old)

It's been a long day...Well, a few long days... We finally were able to sleep in a real bed last night. I know Phillip would probably think that I had the better of the hospital beds (me the actual hospital bed and him the convertible couch). But my bed was actually a plastic mattress on top of a very hard surface. So it was constantly hot and flattened out to nothing once actually sitting on top of it. But at least it had that motorized up and down feature which came in real handy during the c-section recovery. Until the last day, I was unable to get out of the bed by myself. I had to have someone there to help me. It was ridiculous.

We returned to our temporary home (thanks to Michael and Chesley) at about 8:30pm. And then I laid on the couch while taking lots of meds (apparently, I had forgotten to take or ask for any since very early that morning). And then I went to bed...with uninterrupted sleep until 7am. :)

The plan for the day was to go to the hospital to make the 11:30am feeding and spend most of the day with our little guy. But Emerson was dropped off at around 11am (from spending the week with her grandmother - Phillip's mother) so we decided to change the schedule a little bit and go ahead with our trip to Babies R Us (a new Boppy to keep at UAB as ours is in Mobile) and then some lunch with our little girl. So after all that, we headed to the hospital to hand off Emerson to my parents who had been visiting Baby Robert.

The girl can eat. I think she has gained a few pounds just in the past week. As soon as we hit the food court to meet my parents, we needed jello. And fast. Did I mention that we had just had lunch?

So after dropping off Emerson with another set of grandparents...We headed up to see Baby Robert. We found him cuddled up with his grandmother (Phillip's mother). He was getting some good grandparent time in today. I just made the 2:30pm feeding so I was able to give him his bottle. It's so sad that I don't see him as much as I should and then on top of that seem to be missing all the little newborn baby moments too.

When we arrived, we found that Robert graduated from his Giraffe Bed to a NICU crib. :)

He was a little fussy this afternoon and just didn't seem to ever settle down. I had to leave the room for a while so I handed off the baby duties to Phillip.

While I was out of the room, our little guy had a meltdown and dsat'd. Of course, when I return, Phillip prefaces his explanation of the events with "I don't want you to freak out, BUT...". Apparently, Robert's oxygen levels fell into the 60s and his heart rate skyrocketed all while his pulse fell. It set off an urgent alarm to the nurses (alarms are constantly going off, but this one was considered "urgent"). His nurse thought that it occurred due to his positioning...meaning his neck needed to be stretched a bit more to allow enough air in. Scary. But not as scary when you aren't there. Phillip seemed a little nervous. But I took it in stride and just thought it was a rare occurrence and it had all been resolved.

What does "dsat" mean? From what we understand (remember we are new to this...), dsat is just a shortened term for desaturation. Basically, his oxygen levels were very low. A normal healthy baby is in the 97% to 100% range of oxygen saturation. Newborns and small children (healthy) do not have any blockage or damage to their heart, arteries, etc. Therefore, their blood is completely enriched with oxygen. Anything below 93% is worrisome. And anything below 90% is bad. Your brain and vital organs can not survive long-term without receiving more oxygen. Robert's oxygen levels are staying at the low to mid-80 range. They occasionally see the 90 range, but more or less stay in the 80s. His alarms are set to sound when he dips below 80.

I took over baby duties at that point. Phillip still seemed a bit anxious so I encouraged him to go to dinner with his mother. Almost as soon as he left, alarms started sounding...And for the next 3 hours...It was alarm after alarm after alarm. Not all were "dsats", but several were. And then there were the alarms that went off simultaneously. Nothing I did was working. Every few minutes, a nurse would appear and ensure that his monitors were properly placed and still working correctly, reposition him, or just simply silence the alarm. After a while, I asked the nurse to place him back in his bed so we could make sure that it wasn't anything I was doing to set the monitors off. But that didn't stop him, he would rest peacefully and then all of a sudden everything would alarm again. It was insane. And driving me insane. I definitely lost it. Finally, a nurse came in and was able to calm him down...and me down.

Phillip returned from eating dinner and picking up a few things from the house. I think it was a little obvious I needed to leave the room for a bit as he was resting peacefully. So we walked down to the cafeteria and I had a late dinner. Thankfully, when we returned, Robert was still resting. So we decided to come home and have another night of sleep in a real bed.