Always Trust Your Intuition Part 1

Always Trust Your Intuition Part 1

Like I've posted previously, Noah was a great baby.

I loved how snuggly he was and how he looked when he was asleep. I loved playing dress up with him, much to my husband's chagrin. He thought dressing a crying baby was torture. Whatever, he can't go around in his diaper all day! Why waste all those adorable outfits and picture ops??

Noah was also a big eater. I guess because he was a bigger baby, he required more to keep him sustained. They say that's a myth, but um, obviously those myth sayers never had a 9 lb 5 oz 22 inch baby. Noah liked his food, he was eating 4 oz every 3-4 hours, until he was 10 days old. Friday morning started out like any other day.

Nothing really alarmed me about Noah's behavior. He was eating a bit less and sleeping a bit more than usual that morning, but I was told that's what newborns do. They sleep. By the afternoon, I couldn't put Noah down without him whimpering. And he was eating even less. He started to look a bit pale to me by the evening and I literally could not put him down without him crying.

So I decided to take him to a pediatric after hours clinic just to be sure. I phoned my mother-in-law to take me as Shane was still working and she drove me over. Perhaps she genuinely thought I was overreacting, but I felt annoyed by her non-chalant attitude over my baby's symptoms.

I know she felt I was doing him more harm then good putting him in a room with children who were "really sick", not just "sleeping alot". Regardless, Noah was seen by the doctor who assured me he looked alright to him, but that if he continued to not eat into the next morning, to take him to children's emergency to have him looked after.

5 a.m. on Saturday morning, Noah was crying in obvious distress. He had thrown up twice in the past 24 hours and when I tried to feed him, he literally WHIFFED the bottle out of my hand and was choking and gasping for air. At this point, he was barely drinking an ounce, so I told my husband we had to go to the hospital immediately. Shane decided it would be better to at least wait for daylight, and encouraged me to remain calm. I didn't get any sleep that night and around 8, I instinctively put my hands on Noah's chest. It felt like it was pounding out of his chest. I said, "Shane! Feel this!" We took him to the hospital right away.

When we arrived, the nurse checked his heart and vitals and took us back right away. She was so nice and calming. She led us to one room where we undressed Noah, and then she led us to another room that I later saw was the Resuscitation Room.

Before I knew what was happening, there were doctors and nurses everywhere and Noah was hooked up to oxygen, being pricked with needles, and on a heart monitor. They informed me his heart rate was "slightly elevated".

Slightly elevated? I looked at the monitor, and realized that was the "calming word" they used. His heart rate was "slightly elevated" almost 3 times what it should be. The last time I looked at the monitor it was up over 300 and Noah was wailing and they were yelling for Respirartory to get in the trauma room stat. But before respiratory got there, Noah somehow "cardio inverted" himself back to a regular heart rate when they stuck the IV in him.

This was actually a good sign, because his body responded correctly. After many hours in the ER and a heart ultrasound that showed that Noah's heart was structurally sound, we were admitted to the hospital. It's the weekend and specialists don't work the weekends. How nice for them.