Gavin is 2 Months!

Where has the time gone?! I feel like life is flashing by in the blink of an eye! Last Monday, 5/18/15, Gavin turned 2 months young! We had his 2 month check up and I was so nervous. He was getting his vaccinations.

 Daddy had to work at his new job with AT&T and couldn't request the time off yet so Mommy and Nana went to his check up appointment (I was still recovering from my gallbladder issues and couldn't lift him in the car seat, my mother truly is a blessing to be able to help) . They checked his vitals, 11 lbs. 12.5 oz. and 23" long. He is in the 45th percentile for weight and the 50th percentile for length. That could change as he grows but he sure is in a growing spurt. He still has his piercing blue eyes with no indication they are turning any other color but the pediatrician said they could change up to a year of life....yeah right.

The pediatrician came in and checked all his movement abilities, hearing, vision, and everything else they check for in a newborn to make sure he is progressing as he should. She notified me that we are doing a great job with him thus far. She did say we needed to start training him for his sleeping patterns and to give him more tummy time on the floor so he can strengthen his neck muscles. That's a bit hard to do when someone is ALWAYS holding him...haha.

We talked about the idea of him self soothing himself, letting himself cry it out a little now that he is getting older, some people don't agree with this as they feel it makes the baby feel neglected but a baby this small doesn't know if they are manipulating their parents into holding them or spoiling them....I could see that in an older baby but not at 2 months. He is to lay in his crib or our choosing and if he cries, we have to try to let him see if he can soothe himself. After about 5-10 minutes, we can go and comfort him by placing our hand on his chest and talking quietly to him to let him know we are there but if that doesn't work, we can then pick him up and try to calm him down to try again. A baby 2 months old cries because something is wrong, they are hungry, in pain, needing burped or needing to pass gas...whatever it may be, they do not just cry for no reason until they get older and understand that they get a reward for it, at least in my opinion (as well as my  mother's).

The pediatrician explained that we should set goals, particularly about his feeding situation, meaning how long we plan to breastfeed or feed him breast milk, starting to move him to the crib within the next month or two, and give him more tummy time. I guess you can say it's kinda like parent homework. I like that the office does that for us though because it gives us a good idea of what to look for when he starts progressing in age and where he should be. They aren't pushy about it either, they know each parent will have to do what is best for them and their child. I said I would like to have Gavin eating breast milk for at least 6 months but ultimately I was shooting for a year, now that he won't latch from me and I do not produce as much milk, I will take what I can get since breast milk is the most beneficial to him for nutrients. I would like to have him in the crib by himself by 4 months possibly sooner and I said I would work on 15-20 minutes of tummy time a day to help build up his neck muscles. Now that I am back to work, I have told my mom my goals and since she babysits for me, she knows what I would like to happen. If things change and I cannot live up to these goals, that's just life. I will know that I am not failing as a parent, just know that I am doing my best and whats best for our lifestyle.

At the end of the appointment they brought in the shots. I was scared for him, I knew he would cry. I was afraid I would cry...I just held his hand and his head and comforted him. I didn't look at the needle going into his little chubby legs, 2 shots on the right and one on the left....a good 10 minutes of crying and mommy was there to console him. They said his legs could get red, tender to the touch and he could get a fever but none of that happened, my boy is a trooper! 

Gavin still has a full head of hair, cooing and giggling at us, especially when he is dreaming, it's the cutest thing ever! I have people that comment when we are out and about and on facebook that he is the cutest baby and how much more hair he has than most babies...he was definitely blessed in the hair dept. I always say, 'he knew mommy was a hairstylist so he had to come out with something'. He LOVES taking baths but hates getting water in his eyes so it's easier if he takes a bath with mom or dad. He loves motion, walking around while being held of course, bouncing, swinging, riding in a car or stroller. I worry that he is getting used to the vibration feature of his bassinet and his pack n play....his crib does not have a vibration feature!! I guess I'll work all that out when the time comes! That's the perks of parenting. 

I cannot explain the amount of love I have for my son. It is different than the love I have for my husband, my brothers, my best friend....It is so powerful and so rewarding. Gavin is my world, my everything and I wouldn't change anything about him or my lil family! My husband is the best daddy he can be and I give my everything to be the best mommy I can be and we can only hope and pray that it will be enough. Being a parent is a full time job in itself and to know that a tiny human relies on us to sustain life, is a pretty big role but we attack it full force. We would die for our son, take a bullet for him to prevent him any harm. When he is in pain just from a tummy ache, I want to take that pain away from him and the love and desire to be a good mom just gets more intense every day!

We live in a pretty crazy world and to raise a well mannered, well behaved and respectful man is few and far between but we are confident we can make it happen. Eventually we will add to the family but when the time is right....God knows when that will be! For now, we will enjoy the presence of this little man and make memories that we will cherish forever!

When it Rains, it Pours!

11 days. Away from my baby, away from my husband and a horrible hospital experience.

April 26- I started having a lot of upper right abdomen pain and back pain earlier in the week. I thought it was just from feeding my 6 week old baby and hunching over and all the stress from my husband losing his job to finances, and not making money while being on maternity leave wasn't helping either. We had gone to Fricker's with my father and his fiance and her niece so they could finally meet Gavin. Had some fried foods, didn't think anything of it but the pain was gradually getting worse. I told my husband I needed to go to the emergency room, I normally don't go for just any reason so we called up Nana to come watch the baby, got her some milk ready and headed to Soin Medical Center in Beavercreek, Ohio. I was taken right in and within an hour, they had me hooked up to an IV with pain medicine and blood work drawn and an ultrasound ordered to check out my gallbladder.

Ultrasound technician came in, thankfully I wasn't enduring pain because I had morphine running through my veins. She did her thing, taking screen shots of my insides and advised she couldn't medically tell us what was wrong but said we could see what she wrote on the screen for the doctor. "Gallstones" My husband and I looked at each other and knew what that meant, surgery. He has kidney stones so he knows how I was feeling prior to coming in all too well. We waited for the doctor to come in to tell us just what we had seen but didn't expect her to do what she did.

The doctor came in and explained that my ALS and ALT (Liver enzymes) blood work was highly elevated and that I had the gallstones but she suggested that it could be hepatitis a, b or c and needed to follow up with my family doctor for additional blood work. She prescribed me roxycodone (a really strong oxycodone apparently) and zofran, told me not to have any tylenol based medicine as that could be elevating my levels and sent us on our way.

Monday, I called the family doctor and scheduled for an appointment on Tuesday to be seen. I had my prescription filled but we didn't pick it up until 1pm and I was in immense pain again. I took my medicine and felt worse. The zofran I took 30 minutes after the Roxycodone and I started feeling nauseous which is the exact opposite of what it should be doing. I explained to my husband that what I was feeling wasn't right and I wanted to go back to the hospital.

Back to Soin we went. This time we had to wait a little while before being called back but when we went, they hooked me up to an IV in my opposite arm after a failed attempt in the same vein as the day before and got me going on morphine. The doctor came in (Dr. Baily) and expressed concerns with my labs ran the day before and explained that we may have to do the surgery to remove my gallbladder but they would be admitting me to keep me comfortable and run more tests in the morning. Okay, gallbladder surgery is an outpatient thing so I was content with the answer she gave me at the time....

They took me up to my room, got me set with more pain medicine, took more vitals and expressed they would be in to get more blood but didn't say what time. I was already bummed that I had to be away from my baby but I knew my husband was capable of handling it alone, he still called his brother to come stay with him just in case he needed help.

Tuesday morning, someone was there to collect blood by about 5am. Nurse shift change was at 7am so for anyone to get any sleep in a hospital is impossible. We were told the enzyme levels were getting worse, not better so our thinking was that the doctor couldn't do anything because I needed my levels to lower and needed to get an MRI done. Dr. Baily ordered an MRI to check to see if the gallstones left the gallbladder and are in the bile duct to my liver/pancreas and if they are, she said I would need to be transferred to another hospital as they do not have the appropriate equipment to remove the stones. If they show that they are still in my gallbladder, we can do the surgery there.

The MRI test was done Tuesday afternoon, as I was in the machine that everyone is so scared of, where you have to be as still as possible and hold your breath for what feels like forever, they let me listen to music in between their orders of 'breath in, hold your breath, you can breath'. Of course, the song that comes on while i'm in there is the song that nobody can sit still to, MRI or not! 'Shake it Off' by Taylor Swift was playing and I'm supposed to lay there and not move any muscle....hahaha, that was hard!

The doctor came in and told us that the MRI showed that the stones were still in my gallbladder and she would check the blood work results for Hepatitis and as long as everything is good, surgery would be Wed or Thursday at the latest. Great, we knew surgery was a possibility but now it's a definite....this will be my fifth abdomen surgery in five years!

I was put on a NPO which is an order to make sure I do not eat or drink past midnight starting Monday night. Tuesday afternoon, Dr. Baily's partner Dr. Madison came in very quickly, checked my stomach right after I had a dose of pain medicine, pushed on my abdomen and asked if I had any pain...I said not at the moment and he said we were still waiting on more test results.

It's now Wednesday and nothing else was done, no doctor's came back in, my antibiotics stopped coming, nobody told me the results of my hepatitis results and now its the 7pm shift change and I feel left in the dark. I've already had nurses forget about me, pass off to another nurse to administer my pain meds and then they failed to bring them so I had to continuously page the call desk. The nurse the night before changed my pain meds from Morphine to Norco which is a tylenol based drug and the first doctor and Dr. Baily both said not to take anything tylenol as it could be what is irritating my liver. The nurses and assistants failed to check my urine pan and I would have to empty it myself or pee over pee, it's day 3 and nobody has changed or offered to change my bed sheets. I am so frustrated at the service I'm getting and now this.......I asked the nurse, Scott what was going on...I asked if I should have been receiving antibiotics and he looked at my chart, he said they stopped ordering the antibiotics (if I have a liver infection, shouldn't they continue an antibiotic to bring those levels down??)....I was livid!!! He said the charts showed that Dr. Madison noted I was not in any pain and it looked as though they were going to discharge me the next day. I called my husband, crying expressing that I was so frustrated at everything going on, with the staff, the doctors and now they are planning on discharging me to have me come back another day???

My husband called the nurses station and asked for someone in charge, expressed his concerns and that I have been getting horrible service and it's not like this hospital to be this way, I had my appendix removed there in 2012 and it was great service. The charge nurse came in and she told me she talked to my husband and wanted to address my concerns. I explained how upset I was with everything and the pain meds weren't working after an hour and how everything was just wrong, I'd been put through the ringer. She said she would note my account to have the surgeon Dr. come talk to me first thing in the morning and make sure my care that night was great! She made me feel a little at ease but I still had an issue that night. As a new mom, I had to breast feed and I had a male nurse, he did not knock when he came in and I had to pump a couple times which made it awkward as he entered. He was told to come without me requesting it to give me my pain meds even if I was sleeping. Around 5am, he came to give me my medicine and he asked me if I had talked to the doctor.....??? He said Dr. Madison was there at 3am to talk to another patient and didn't come in to talk to me....that just pissed me off even more.

Finally, around 8:30am on Thursday, Dr. Madison came in with his PA and needless to say we layed into him about how we've been treated and left in the dark. I told him I would like the surgery and I wanted it today! He was taken back by it but we explained that our insurance was about to expire so if he discharged us and we had to come back, it wouldn't be covered. We had a 7 week old baby at home that I needed to get back to and I'm losing supply from breast feeding along with everything else. He wasn't very sympathetic but he did say he would check out my records and see where we stood with surgery and he would let us know. A few hours later Dr. Madison came back and expressed he needed more blood work whether it be today, tomorrow, a week ( A WEEK???) He said based on everything, we would be having surgery before I left the hospital. He said he would send someone in to let us know a time. Shortly after that, a nurse told us we would be having surgery either 2:30pm or 7:30pm depending on when the OR is available.......2:30 comes along, 3:30 comes and goes, 5:30pm, someone finally comes back to explain what is happening during surgery and that I need to remove all jewelry, clothing, etc. 7pm, they came to get me for pre-op and explained that someone would come get my family or the doctor would come talk to them after to tell them how it went.

As I'm sitting in the OR prep area, the anesthesiologist explains that I need to get this gallbladder out and it needs to come out now based on my levels. I wasn't surprised..... Surgery happened and I came out of recovery quickly, talking with the nurse about infertility, the struggle it took me to have my baby and how much I missed my baby. They took me up to my room where my mother, step dad, Gavin and husband were, clueless on how everything went. The doctor never went to talk to anyone, they didn't send for anyone to come talk to the doctor so we had no idea the outcome. Thankfully I had some chicken noodle soup waiting for me, the kitchen was closed and my throat needed something warm.

The next morning (FRIDAY), Dr. Baily came in with 4 other doctor's and nurses and explained that they successfully removed the gallbladder but during the surgery she injected a dye and did an x-ray which is protocol for this surgery and saw that there were gallstones in the bile duct which she wasn't able to remove and that a GI doctor would be in to talk to me about the next steps. She said I would be going to another hospital for an ERCP procedure. Basically that is a scope procedure where they put a tube down my throat and try to grab the stones and pull them out.

The GI doctor came in and I was half way through my breakfast because I could FINALLY eat something after 4 days and she explained that I would be going to Kettering Hospital but she didn't think I could have the procedure today since I just ate!! OMG, ARE YOU KIDDING ME? If Dr. Bailey had explained to my family the night before, I would have known not to eat for this next procedure. They requested a transfer via EMS and I was so glad to be leaving that hospital away from that staff and those doctor's. Good riddance.

Friday afternoon and I'm switched over to a double room in Kettering Medical Center, ready for pain meds as I hadn't had any for about 3 hours...told them that the pain was getting worse quicker and they switched me to Dilauded every 3 hours instead of every 2. It took them 5 1/2 hours to get me pain meds because they requested the pic team to run a new IV (my other one had been in for 4 1/2 days)....I was in excruciating pain and they finally brought me meds and gave to me in my old IV. Then they saw that I had a newborn and that my husband had a hard time moving around the double room even though nobody else was in it so they moved me to a private room, thankfully. That night was interesting also to say the least. The night nurse knew I was supposed to receive my medicine on time every time and was always 20-30 minutes late. One time, I had to page her twice and she was over an hour late. I also had leg pumps on my legs through the night so I didn't clot and they started beeping. I paged the desk for someone to come help and 30 minutes later, it finally got shut off. I was truly hoping that it wasn't going to be this way the whole time I was here at another hospital. I thought maybe I was just sensitive from the other hospital but that nurse was really crappy.

Saturday, they have me scheduled for the ERCP around 2pm and my husband was in the waiting room while they did the procedure. They explained how they were going to try to remove the stones and that it was possible they would have to cut open my sphincter to reach them but they were hopeful for a successful procedure. I was put out under general anesthesia, again. I woke up in recovery to another room and everything was fuzzy but I remember them saying it didn't work and they weren't successful at getting the stones. I started balling my eyes out. My husband called my mother and requested she bring Gavin because he would be the only thing that would make me happy at this moment. By the time I came to the room, they were there about 5 minutes after I arrived. I was so upset. When I came to completely, the GI doctor came in and explained to me my options. He said I could have the procedure done again by a doctor at Good Samaritan who does this procedure more than he does or I can go to University of Indiana to a specialist who does this procedure all day long. I told him I needed to think about it and wanted to tell him on Sunday. They wanted things to calm down in me for a couple days before they did anything else as they thought maybe the inflammation or scar tissue is what blocked them from getting the stones.

My husband and I talked about it, we weighed the pros and cons and we decided to skip the middle man and just have me go to UI for a higher success rate. They offered to discharge me and have me drive there or offered to have me transferred via EMS. He suggested an EMS since I couldn't handle pain meds orally and they could help me manage my pain on an ambulance. I decided to go by EMS. Monday evening at 8pm, I was picked up by transport EMS and loaded up. I knew I wouldn't be able to see my baby because he didn't need to be in another hospital so far from home and that was the hardest thing I had to do yet. I got there around 10:30pm and was in a room by 10:45, due for pain meds again. Had to wait for the new doctor to come in and admit me, get my vitals and I felt like I was in a horror movie. Everything was outdated, I was in a double room where the bathroom was on the neighbors side, the room was so small and I could touch my neighbor if I held my hand out. I was all alone and I felt scared, sad, emotional. I was so ready for all of this to just be done.

I couldn't sleep, I'm 2 hours away from home with nobody to visit, my baby is at home with daddy which I know he was in good hands but it sucked that I couldn't be with him. My neighbor is a bigger black woman who had been there for a week...had something done with her abdomen. She had issues holding in her bowels and would get sick anytime she tried to eat or take medicine. The bathroom trash had her used depends and things they would use to clean up her vomit and I had to ask them to change the trash so I didn't have to smell it. I was on an NPO which again, meant I couldn't eat or drink anything all day Tuesday not knowing when my procedure would be scheduled. The nurse staff was great, caring, on time with my medicine and sympathetic to my pain and knowing I have a baby at home so a lot of them asked about him. I finally got smart and started video chatting with daddy and Gavin. That made things bearable. They finally came in and said I would be the last procedure of the evening and there were 3 in front of me. This was around 2pm. About 3:45 they came in and got me, took me to prep for the procedure and even though it was an outpatient procedure they said I would be staying overnight since it would be so late and they wanted to make sure I didn't get additional pancreatitis. The procedure was done around 5:30pm, was out and in recovery around 6:45pm and back in my room by 7:30pm. The kitchen was closed. I had to eat jello, pudding and ice cream and was so ready for a regular meal. I was so happy though that the procedure was a success. They said I would be discharged the following day and I was. Wednesday, my husband dropped off Gavin with Nana at 6:30am and headed out to get me. The moment he showed up, the doctors already had me discharged and the nurse was getting my discharge papers. I was so happy to be going home. I sure hope nobody ever has to deal with this, EVER!! Especially 7 weeks after having a baby.

I am so fortunate to have a husband who was able to be Mr. Mom for 11 days, a Nana to help him when he needed and for all the love and support from the people following me and my story on Facebook. I had a special childhood friend, Michelle, talking with me and consoling me every day I was there. She lives in South Carolina but I know if she was in town, she would have been there every day with me, making me laugh and there for me when I cried. It is great to have a friend like that.  I almost wish I wrote this out daily as I was in the hospital but I'm just happy it's over with and that I could spend my birthday and my first mother's day home with my family.