Joshua's Wild Weekend

Some had asked for the details last night (p.s. sorry about the little fussbucket!) so here's the very long story about Joshua's weekend.

Saturday morning was normal enough. He woke up and had a feeding and we headed out the door to visit Greg?s parents in Floresville. When we got there he was due for another feeding so I fed him. When I burped him he ended up spewing quite a bit, if not all, of the breastmilk he had just ingested. We knew he had some reflux issues and he previously had occurrences of spitting up, so I didn?t think much of it.

I tried rocking him to sleep afterwards and noticed he was much more agitated and resistant to going down than normal but eventually he finally went to sleep. Eventually he woke up and again I fed him and again he spewed up a significant amount of breastmilk and seemed not his usual self. I thought it was just a random coincidence. Well at 6:30 pm, about 2 feedings later he was still spewing and I knew something was not right. This was not my Joshie.

I called the pediatric practice that we take Joshua to and luckily our pedi was on call. I explained the systems?.projectile spewing, agitation, no fever, still crying and hungry. His initial reaction was that Joshua was displaying all the typical symptoms for Pyloric Stenosis, which basically means that the lower part of the stomach is too narrow where it empties into the intestine. This prevents the food, or milk in this case, from moving out of the stomach and causes vomiting. The risk of pyloric stenosis hits its peak between 4 and 6 weeks of age. Joshua will be six weeks tomorrow (Tuesday).

He told us that if this was the case, it would be treatable but he would have to admitted for surgery. My heart sunk into my chest as I imagined my poor, little baby being cut open. The doctor advised us that he was calling ahead to the ER at Methodist Hospital and that we should head there immediately. We quickly gather up his things and drove to Methodist Hospital. We decided to pray the rosary to try to calm our nerves and began to feel at peace.

We finally got to the ER around 8pm where they took his vitals and gave him some pedialyte. They hooked him up to an IV for fluids and connected him to a monitor so they could track his vitals. There was my sweet little angel, wires coming out from all over....crying out in hunger and we couldn?t do anything. Around 9 pm they began a battery of tests. First we were taken to radiology where they did an ultrasound of his stomach. About 30 minutes later we went to x-ray and then had a CT scan before finally going back to our little ER room to have some blood drawn. He was such a trooper through it all.

Around midnight, my parents arrived with food?.we hadn?t eaten since lunch that day. We informed them about the various tests he had done. Shortly after, our nurse gave us the results from the CT scan. We were relieved to find out he didn?t have Pyloric Stenosis, but the CT scan found some calcifications in his Inferior Vena Cava and kidney.

Because of this finding they took some more blood as well as a urine sample (which they had to get via catheter?.not fun) and we were admitted to the NICU. We stayed with him until 6am on Sunday morning when they kicked us out during shift change. We went home, showered, caught a quick nap and then went back to the hospital hoping our pediatrician would be there to tell us we could take him home and hopefully get him ready in time for his baptism.

Well he was there but unfortunately he informed us that they had to run some more tests. They gave him some barium to drink so that they could do a scan of his GI tract and then later that morning another tech came in to do an echocardiogram on his heart, to check on the calcifications they had found the day before. We quickly realized that his baptism would have to be postponed, which we were really sad about. We had family and friends coming in from out of town and the food already being prepared for his reception. But it took only one glance about 15ft away for us to realize that we were truly blessed.

Josh had been admitted to NICU due to overflow, so he was definitely the big kid on the block. Every time we left the NICU or returned we had to walk by 3-4 beds with these tiny premie babies. My heart ached for them. There bodies were so, so small and when they cried they sounded more like tiny kittens than a little human?.there cries were much less powerful than my 6 week old?s. I realized that despite the unfortunate timing and all the tests he had undergone we were so blessed to have an otherwise healthy baby. 

We waited all day for the results of the morning?s echocardiogram. Finally just around 5pm, the told us we were being moved from NICU to the Intermediate Care Unit and that he would probably be discharged within the next few hours. At 6pm we had to leave the hospital for the nurses shift change. We were pulling out of the parking lot when we got a call from his pediatrician. He told us we were going to take him home that night! He also let us know that we would need to schedule follow up appointments with a hematologist and kidney doctor to monitor the calcifications that came up during the testing. We didn?t care how many follow-ups we?d have to schedule as long as we got to take our baby home!

We ran back into the hospital to see if we could take him home, but were told that we?d have to wait until after shift change. So we went down the block to Chick-Fil-A and called our families to let them know the good news. Finally, we were back at the hospital and the nurse was going over the discharge paperwork and doctors orders. By 8:30 pm we were home!

It was a long, exhausting couple of days but we were so relieved that he wasn?t seriously ill and that he wouldn?t have to have surgery. All night I kept thinking about the little NICU babies, and part of me was a little sad that I would get to see them anymore. We will continue to pray for them and their families and continue to thank God and our relatives in Heaven for watching over our sweet baby. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers! It is so good to be home!