So much has happened since my last post. I wanted to post this great story about breaking my little girl out of the NICU and getting her home and falling into a healthy happy baby routine...but the reality is that only half of that is really true.
We were discharged to go home on Thursday, February 7th. I really wonder if something had started to go wrong then because she had started not wanting to take her full bottle...but we'll never know. (TMI warning- with kids, anything goes) By Saturday, she seemed to be having lots of loose poopy diapers but when I called her pediatrician they said it was normal..and probably from the change in ready-made formula to the powder kind...
On Monday, the 10th, I have my total thyroidectomy and 6 lymph nodes were removed. I was in a ton of pain & had to stay overnight so it was Tuesday afternoon when I got home. Justin went back to work on Wednesday and his mom came out to the house to take care of the baby since my surgery limited what I could/couldn't do.
Friday, baby's first Valentine's Day, I decided I wanted to take her to see the pediatrician again because I didn't think something was right. She was still pooping loose stools & her incision site/area seemed a bit puffy to me. She just acted like she didn't feel well. I got her dressed in her cute little Valentine's Day outfit after she had her bottle & when I went to put her in the car seat she threw up all over her outfit. I didn't think anything of it because sometimes if we moved her around too much, she'd do that in the NICU. So...off to the doctor we went. He said her poop looked fine & he could not feel anything wrong with her belly & she had normal belly sounds.
I feel like I should have better advocated for my child right then & there but at the same time you trust your doctor to know if something isn't right.
On Sunday, around noon she started vomiting. We gave her pedialite as instructed by the after hours care to help keep her hydrated and followed up Monday morning with her pediatrician's office via phone. They said it was probably a bug because the pedialite stayed down through the night and instructed us to work her back onto her formula.
She was doing okay with that and so Justin & I left her with his mom so I could go to my post op appointment about my thyroid. I learned that 3 of the 6 lymph nodes taken had tested positive for cancer so the radioactive iodine is a must.
Grandma called as we were leaving to come home saying the baby had started crying and she couldn't get her to stop. Grandma is a pro when it comes to babies too because keeping babies/kids is what she's done as long as I've known her. When we got home, the baby was screaming and it wasn't a normal cry it was an I'm in pain cry...something I hope I never ever have to hear again.
We took her to pediatric after hours care since it was after hours and they sent us straight to the ER. Once there, they knew something was bad wrong but didn't know what and they felt they couldn't treat her because of her surgery so the transport team from Children's was paged out to come & get her while the hospital continued to run tests. It took several hours for them to arrive and it was close to 5am before we arrived back in Atlanta by ambulance.
We took her for x-rays and at 6:30 we met with a surgeon. She said with the x-rays they could see something was wrong and she would need to have another surgery. They wouldn't be able to tell exactly what was wrong until they got in and were able to see with their eyes. By 8:30 they were taking her back to get prepped and surgery started at 9.
It turns out her first surgery caused scar tissue to create a second blockage and her intestines perforated and leaked the contents out into her belly.
So....I was not expecting this but emotionally I'm not too banged up...just worried about my little girl through this crazy whirlwind of 10 days we've had.
