Our first Brenner's visit

The Saturday after Cara turned 2 weeks old her eye started running and gooping up all of a sudden.  I would wipe it and then it would goop right back up.  Then I noticed that she seemed a little stuffy so I sprayed her nose with saline spray and she stopped breathing!  As I freaked out she struggled to get her breath back (scariest time EVER)!!  Once she calmed down I started feeding her then about 2 sips in she choked and stopped breathing AGAIN!  This time I managed to scream for Chris, she was just getting her breath back when he got to us, but I wasn't going to just let all of that go so I called the after hours nurse.  Why is it that they always get sick on the weekends??  So I had to call give my number and wait for a nurse to call me back...By this time, she couldn't even open her eye up.  The nurse called back, I explained what had happened and she said that she would have to call the dr. on call.  I'm thinking ok they will have us go in and be seen, NOPE she called back and said that the dr. on call wanted us to take her to the ER at Baptist!  One of the worst things for a mother to hear!  Luckily Sabrina and Dustin had come over for dinner that night so we were able to just go and leave Addie with them. 

When we got to the Hospital Chris let me out while he went and parked.  I got us signed in and we sat in the waiting room, luckily we only sat for a minute or two before they called us back.  I think they work faster when it has to do with babies.  Good thing too because I really didn't like having her sit in that ER with all of those sick people around!  I would never wish an ER visit on any parent especially one with their infant child, but although we were in the ER the staff was really great.  The nurses were very conscious  of Chris and I, especially me and my emotional state.  They explained everything to us as they did it.  They had to take a whole bunch of samples like snot, urine, eye drainage etc..Then they had to take blood and insert an IV line...I tear up just thinking about that moment when they had to do all of that to my newborn baby.  Oh and we find out during this process that Cara is allergic to the clear tape they use to tape the splint to her, so they had to re tape everything with the paper tape. 

We had dr. after dr. coming in having to have the story told and retold, with WFBMC a school we had lots of people around learning, asking and so forth.  Not that I minded, because the worst part was when they just left us sitting in the room by ourselves, so it was nice to have some sort of medical professional around most all of the time.  Then one of the residents came in to talk to us...She explained that with a child that small they have to react to any sign of infection whatsoever.  Then she uttered the last thing that I ever wanted to hear, something that I have feared since Addie was a newborn, a spinal tap!  That was the only way that they would be able to tell if in fact there was an infection and if so what they would need to do to treat it.  Then she explained how it was going to go, how long it would take and we could stay if we would like, but most parents didn't, because they didn't want to witness their child having to be restrained.  Well I did what any mother in my position would do, I sat down.  There was no way I was going to get up and leave my baby in there by herself!  When you are a mother you set aside the excruciating pain that you feel to protect( as best you can) your children.  I may have been completely crumbling inside, but wanting to witness it or not I had to be there for her, I just couldn't leave her...Then as Chris was pleading with me to go outside with him and I was protesting the nurse decides to chime in and play the sterile card (how did she know me like that??).  She proceeds to tell me that it is best that I wait outside because everything has to be really sterile for the process, well I couldn't argue with that now could I, so reluctantly I stepped out with my husband. 

What seemed to be a lifetime of waiting later; they finally came out and got us, as we walked back in the Dr. gets this look of sorrow on her face, they tried twice, but couldn't get any fluid...So what did this mean?  Were they going to have to go through the process all over again or were we just not going to know exactly what was wrong.  If you know me at all you should know that I have to have specific details, so not knowing didn't ease my worries at all.  But did I really want my baby girl to have to go through that again and could I even stand to be away form her any longer?!?  Well she took us back into the room where Cara was and I scooped her up as the dr. explained our options.  Since they couldn't get any fluid they decided to just start her on a few different antibiotics and admit her. 

The dr.s and nurses were simply amazing, they took such good care of us from start to finish and you could really tell that they cared.  The way they would stop and gaze into her eyes (not just because she had goop in one of them)  they would examine her and then stop for a moment each time to rub her head and stare into her deep blue eyes.  Everyone who came in to check on her did this and there were so many different people checking on her, it just made me(as a mother) feel so good about the care that she was getting.  We even had a speech therapist come in to monitor her eating.  She checked all of her reflexes and determined that the reason she had stopped breathing was a result of reflux. 

After 48 hours they had gotten all of her test results back and they were all normal so we were discharged, God is so good.  Thankfully there wasn't anything major wrong but if there was I would know that we were in good hands.  They rated our admittance as a potential life threatening situation which is something that happened to scare us bad enough to bring her in which scares them bad enough to keep her.  I am thankful that they ran all of the tests they did to make sure that she was okay to go back home with us without any complications.