Part II: The long road home

The first 48 hours after being admitted into the NICU is critical. This is the amount of time it takes to receive results from the first round of cultures. The cultures will tell you if the baby has an infection in the lungs. If the results come back positive the baby will be administered antibiotics for 7 days (so your baby will be there a minimum of that time). If the results come back negative your baby will be taken off the antibiotics after 48 hours and will have the chance to go home quicker. Here is a summary of Hudson's first 48 hours.

8.30.09
5:00 am - I woke up from a short cat nap wondering what was going on with Hudson. It's amazing how adrenaline can make you feel like a super-hero even when you've hardly had any sleep. I made a call over to the special nursery to see if he was improving and was told that a nurse would call me back. Waiting for 30 minutes seemed like forever.

5:30 - The nurse comes to our room to inform us that Hudson's breathing has not improved and if anything it has worsened. He is going to be sent up to the NICU for more testing and evaluation. She gave us the chance to see him before he was sent up to the NICU.

5:45 - Hudson is brought by our room on his way up to the NICU. I remember thinking that he would go up there for the day and then be back in our arms later that night or the next day (boy, was I was naive about the situation and his condition). We are told that once he is checked in up there and settled in that they would let us know so we could go visit him.

7:00 - We receive a call from the NICU to say that Hudson is settled in and that we can come up anytime. Since he left our room at 5:45 they have run a series of test on him including chest x-rays and blood cultures to test for infections.

8:00- We go up to the NICU to see him for the first time. He is hooked up to high flow oxygen which means there is air being pushed through his nose into his lungs to help him breath. He also has an IV for antibiotics. When a baby is admitted into the NICU with symptoms like his, they immediately start an IV for antibiotics in case there is an infection in the lungs. After the blood cultures come back (48 hours later) they will determine whether the baby stays on antibiotics.

We see the doctor that is treating Hudson and he gives us an update. The x-rays showed hazy lungs and he is working very hard to breath. He said that due to his early arrival this was not abnormal. The information we were given was fairly minimal and we didn't comprehend the severity of his condition.

It is heartbreaking to see your little baby laying there hooked up to several machines. There are wires placed all over the chest to monitor the heart rate and breathing in addition to the IV and oxygen. The nurses tried to explain all the different details but it was very confusing all at once. There were several monitors that displayed statistics and vitals but we didn't fully grasp the whole picture. It took several days to understand everything and put the pieces of the puzzle together. Looking back, I think I went through Sunday just kind of ho-hum about it all. I think at this stage of the game, in my mind, I thought he would be coming home in just a couple of days. I had no idea that the process would be more entailing and that his battle would be much longer. Reality had not set in yet.

11:00 - my family comes up to visit and they bring Jordyn. We take turns going up to see Hudson. Jordyn isn't allowed in the NICU because she is under the age of 3, so she stays in my postpartum room and plays with us. She is totally oblivious to the fact that I just had a baby and that she is now a big sister.

16:00 - they put a camera next to Hudson so we can see him from our postpartum room. It's comforting to know that even when we aren't up there we can still see him via the live video feed.

Nothing else changes in regards to Hudson throughout the day. We are told that the doctors will make their rounds each morning and give us updates. At this point Hudson is receiving IV fluids for food and he has not been given a feeding tube for milk yet. I begin pumping so that my window of opportunity for breastfeeding does not pass.

08.31.09
8:00 - My OB/GYN comes in to check on me for the first time since delivering Hudson (she wasn't on call over the weekend). I'm so happy to see her! We talk about all the events that have occurred thus far and she listens to all my concerns. She is the first person to actually have a back and forth dialog with me about the whole situation and puts it into perspective. She tells me to expect a week minimum for Hudson to be in the NICU. At this moment I am thinking "Wow! I didn't expect to hear that!" I was sure he would be coming home in a matter of days, not weeks, but boy was I wrong. I'm on the verge of tears now, but I hold back. I don't want to let me guard down because I fear that I will totally lose it. My doctor gives me the option to leave today or stay 1 more day. I'm ready to go and be home with my little girl and sleep in my own bed. So she starts the discharge paperwork and I prepare to go home.

Minutes after my doctor leaves - I just lay in my bed and let everything sink it. It takes me about 10 minutes to cool down and digest everything that I have just learned. I know my little boy is going to come home eventually and he doesn't have life-threatening problems, but I am still bummed. Jon and I keep our cool about everything and continue to keep a positive outlook.

9:30 - Allison stops by for a quick visit. She and I go to the NICU to visit Hudson. Everything is the same as the day before except now he has a feeding tube through his mouth that goes directly into his stomach. He will begin receiving doses of breastmilk today every 3 hours. He looks like a science project with all the tubes and wires running to him.

11:00-12:00 - nurses prepare to discharge me. Jon and I do our final visit up to the NICU to see Hudson before we leave. We know there will be no news until the 48 hour mark on Tuesday AM. So we love on him and say our good-byes until we can make it back up. At this point we don't know when that will be since we can't take Jordyn with us. We will have to find someone to watch every time we want to visit Hudson.

13:00 - I get discharged and we head home. The feeling of leaving the hospital without your baby is indescribable. A sense of emptiness overwhelms you and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. On the ride home Jon and I discussed how we were both struggling with the fact that Hudson wasn't with us, but we then we would come right back to the same conclusion that our daughter also needed us just as much. And that's what kept us focused on keeping it together and not losing it.

19:00 - went back up to the hospital to see Hudson again. The Hoffman side of the family (Gammy, Great-aunt Michelle, and Uncle Daniel) met us up there to spend some time with him too. We found out that if we stayed until 9 pm that we would get to watch a feeding. So we stuck around and were even able to hold him for a couple of minutes. This was extremely exciting because we had not been able to hold him since immediately after he was born. We had an awesome NICU nurse that night that explained all the vitals and what all the different stats meant on the monitors. That night we took a leap in knowledge about the situation and it gave us a piece of mind going home that night. We felt like we were really beginning to understand the environment he was in.

Tomorrow morning would be a critical mile marker in his journey, but for now it was off to bed to get some much needed sleep in our own bed.....