It’s been a crazy 3 weeks! Hard to believe that less than a month ago Lauren and Landon were still just my and Chad’s little secrets (well their names were at least). I can’t believe how quickly things change. Everyone can give you advice and tell you about how parenthood will change you, but I really think it’s something you have to experience for yourself to really “get it”. For instance, living your life 3 hours at a time. Before the nuggets, my day consisted of two time periods; before lunch and after lunch (I really enjoy food). Now I schedule my day in 2 ½ hour increments (by the way, you can’t get as much done in 2 ½ hours as you would think). Another example is that I get excited about burps, color of poop and just overall gas. Don’t get me wrong, I always thought farts were funny, but now they are a celebration (I’ll elaborate on this in a bit). The sleep factor is also interesting. I got borderline tired of hearing while pregnant, “oh boy twins, you better sleep now, because you never will again,” or something close to this, but what they don’t tell you is that even though you are tired and may or may not have got a shower that day, you really don’t care. I just love to sit and look at them. Sure it would be nice to get 6 hours of sleep all at one time, but I’ll take it in 2-3 hour stretches right now and I know it won’t last forever (I may change my tune when I have to go back to work, but I digress).
Some of you might have heard about our little hiccup upon bringing Lauren home on Thursday, January 19, but if you haven’t I must warn you that this story is a bit long (no judgement Nicole on the one long giant paragraph). Feel free to scroll to the bottom just to look at the pictures J
After Lauren came home, she continued to eat and seemed to be doing well, but at our doctor appointment on Monday, her pediatrician made mention of her distended hard tummy. He said if she didn’t poop by the end of the day that I would need to take her in to the ER because she might have colitis or something blocking her intestines. I didn’t worry too much about it, because Lauren promptly pooped when we got home and seemed to be fine. She ate at 3, 6 and at her 9 pm feeding she seemed very lethargic and her tummy was tight and very distended. We decided better to be safe than sorry and took her to Children’s Mercy ER, or what I will refer to as the worst hospital care I have ever received. Upon checking in, they told us it would be a several hour wait (Seriously with a preemie that has a distended tummy?), finally at 2 a.m. (4 hours after we checked in) we saw a doctor. They had us do a flat plate X-ray (holding her while she screamed her head off) that showed her stomach/intestines completely full of air bubbles. Around 3, the doctor told us they would need to admit her and start an IV. This news brought me to full on breakdown mode (the lack of sleep might have also been a factor). Thankfully my mother stayed with her while they did her IV, while I sobbed out in the hallway and Chad attempted to console me. Finally around 6 a.m. (yes you read that correctly- it took us almost 8 hours to get seen in the ER and admitted upstairs) they moved her to a room and we were going to discuss further testing. We ended up doing a barium enema, where they shoot a dye into her intestine and take pictures. Again, I held her and attempted to comfort her as she screamed her head off while they did this procedure. The results from the radiology report showed some constriction in her intestine and near her rectum which could be consistent with Hirschbrungs Disease. Hirschbrung’s Disease is where part of your intestine doesn’t have nerve ending and therefore it is like a dead portion of your intestine. Hirschbrungs can only be fixed by surgery where they would have to cut out the dead portion of the intestine and reattach it to a working part. Anyways, long story short, I really didn’t feel like Lauren was getting adequate care at CMH. The doctors went hours without checking on her, they disconnected her IV and told me not to feed her and there wasn’t a lot of communication about what we were going to do. This brings us to the portion of the retelling where I lost my mind. I thought I went a little crazy when I was pregnant and not sleeping.. that doesn’t even hold a candle to this crazy train episode. I “very sternly” talked to the doctors through sobs and told them I was 5 minutes away from signing her out AMA (against medical advice) and taking her to North Kansas City. After my mild, “bitch out” session, amazingly there was a surgical team in our room in a matter of minutes. They advised me to have a biopsy done of Lauren’s bowels to rule out Hirschbrungs or see if surgery was needed. Again, my mom stayed with Lauren (seriously, she’s an angel) while Chad, my dad and I waited outside. The next day, the results of her biopsy were negative but it still showed that she has some constriction in her bowels/rectum which is more than likely a result of her being a preemie. They gave us simethincone (gas-x) drops and told us to come back if she has anymore issues (uh, when hell freezes over.. I’m never going back there). Thus the excitement of burps, gas and color of poop. Thankfully, Lauren hasn’t had anymore issues and hopefully we are done with the hospital for awhile.
We had their newborn pictures taken this week and they are both looking pretty perfect. ME Photography out of Liberty does an amazing job!!
