More on Mini-Me

Alex wasn't a well baby.  Around 10 a.m. on the morning he was born, we asked the nurses to take him for a little while so I could sleep.  When I saw him again, he was on IV's, oxygen, blood and heart monitors.  The doctor had discovered a heart murmur and he had tachypnea.  He couldn't keep his oxygen levels up and in just a few hours he had turned orange as an oompa loompa.  Already they were talking about sending him to Alta Bates for more health care.  The decision was finally made the next day when he had gotten sicker, though they had managed to start weaning him off the oxygen.

An ambulance was sent to get him.  There were 2 nurses, 2 paramedics and a driver.  They transferred him to a big isolate and wheeled him over to the elevators.  Pat wheeled me along with him.  When the elevator doors shut, he said "Good bye Alex" and I broke into tears. 

Pat followed him over there that night, while I tried to get my milk flowing using a pump.  When he came back he told me Alex was in the level 3 nursery and was being taken care of.

Once I was release, the next day, I was determined to go see him.  At the NICU ward, they has a magnet board with teddy bear magnets on it, each with the last name of the babies.  Alex had been moved to another ward.  He was on bilirubin lights and had a feeding tube placed.  I was so scared for him  He had lost so much weight, that he didn't even look like the baby I had delivered.

Alex had a long, expensive NICU stay.  Amongst other things, they kept drawing so much blood from him, that he nearly had to have blood transfusions. 

The day we brought him home we were required to spend the night before there.  They had a tiny little room that was even too hot for me to sleep in.  We found a fan and opened the windows, but the hospital was in downtown Berkeley and very noisy.  It turned out that, with the rush of getting him stabilized in the NICU, that the doctors had forgotten to do a hearing test which had to be rushed through on the way out of the door.