Anistyn’s hospital stay

As a mom, one of my biggest fears is having a sick newborn. I don’t know what it is, other than they’re so tiny and helpless and can’t tell me when somethings wrong, but it makes me so nervous. Many of you know we have literally been nothing but sick since just before Christmas. Literally, nothing but sick!

Anyways, lets go back to the middle of January. All the kids were sick. I took the older two kids to the doctor on Friday and was told they had a virus. Great. Nothing can be done for them, just wait it out. Monday morning Emmersyn and Anistyn had woken up with nasty coughs, took them to the soc and I was told it was a virus. Even more great…4 sick kids and no meds to get them better. Wednesday morning I wanted to have Anistyn seen again because I thought she was having a harder time breathing and her cough seemed worse. At the office, the nurse gave her a breathing treatment which didn’t help. I was told she had bronchiolitis and there was still not much we could do just wait for her to get better. That evening Anistyn started making me nervous because she started not wanting to eat as much because her breathing was a little more difficult. I called the on call doctor at 10pm. They told me to watch her. She literally slept all night, woke at 9 am ate for 5 minutes and went right back to sleep until noon (that’s normal for her so I didn’t think anything of it!).

As soon as Anistyn woke up at noon she could hardly catch her breath, wouldn’t eat and was definitely in distress. I called the doc right away and told her Anistyn needed to be seen right away because of her breathing and she hadn’t had a wet diaper in 14 hrs. I called Ty, he came home from work and I was out the door in 15 minutes. She was checked out at the doc and they saw her oxygen level was down and the way she was breathing they sent us straight to the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital to be admitted for RSV.

I was nervous, yet, felt much more comfortable there. They were able to keep her monitored and I didn’t have to worry like I was doing at home. She got an IV right away because she wouldn’t (or couldn’t) eat and hadn’t had a wet diaper in far too long. In fact, she ended up going 3 entire days without nursing at all. She couldn’t breath, suck and swallow at the same time. So I pumped for 3 days and she got an IV with fluids so she didn’t get dehydrated.

Our 4th day at the hospital I thought for sure we were going home until the late afternoon when her oxygen level kept dipping down into the mid 80s (should be high 90s). So instead of sending us home they put her on oxygen. That kept us there another 2 days, unfortunately. So after 5.5 days in the hospital she was good to go. I was so glad to be able to be with her the entire time. I never once left the hospital, in fact I only left her room twice a day for lunch and dinner. I LOVED that they had volunteers willing to sit and hold her so I didn’t have to leave her alone! How do parent’s do that? I just couldn’t imagine. What if she cried? There would have been no one there to pick her up!

I’m so glad to be home with my happy and healthy baby. I have to admit it was wonderful to literally sit and hold my girl for hours upon hours without interruption. But I missed my other crazy kids and missed the noise (okay, I didn’t miss the cooking or cleaning, but I missed my babies and hubby) Ty did bring the older kids to see us once (I mean really, what do you do with three kids in a hospital room?!) My mom came and watched the older kids two days, Ty had them for one weekday and the weekend. Ty did a wonderful job holding down the fort (which I wasn’t worried about AL ALL!).