When friends ask me what is my advice on being a mother, the first thing I usually tell them is let go of expectations. It’s easy to make this grand plan in your mind for the way something is going to look or how something should be and when it doesn’t happen you completely fall apart. That advice is so easily said and so much harder to actually put into practice.
I didn’t expect for these to be Kellan’s newborn photos. I didn’t expect that a doctor visit would turn into rushing to the emergency room. And for sure never expected to spend three days in the NICU with our precious new baby and more time away from Liam.
Let me preface this with the fact that I know in the grand scheme of things Kellan will be fine and there are families who experience much greater obstacles then we have been through. I know, I saw them in their decorated NICU rooms crying while getting bad news from the doctors. It was incredibly devastating.
The day after Kellan was born, I was nursing him when the pediatrician came for rounds. As soon as she walked in the room I looked down and noticed my newborn baby was turning purple! She pulled him off me right away and had a nurse grab a pulse ox machine. Right away it blasted an alerting beeping sound. His oxygen levels were low. We assumed it was the position that he was laying and perhaps the cysts were putting pressure on his diaphragm or lungs. They ordered an x-ray and ultrasound. Within that same hour the pediatric urologist told us that Kellan would need surgery at 6 months and we would have to wait until then to have his circumcision done. AND then they performed the hearing test and he failed. I was filled with fear. WHAT was going on with this sweet new baby of mine?!
The X-ray and Ultrasound showed what we already knew, that those cysts are huge but nothing was putting pressure on anything that would affect his breathing. They suggested that I hold him differently when nursing and the pulse ox showed that to be helpful so that is what we chalked it up to. He did pass the hearing test the second time it was administered.
After that scare we decided to order the owlet monitor for peace of mind. It arrived Tuesday and we put it on him that night at bedtime. Two minutes after he fell asleep the alert started going off. We thought we didn’t set it up right or it wasn’t on right. We adjusted everything and tried again. A few minutes later it was going off. We decided to take him into the doctor the next morning.
Every time we have been worried about something with Liam it has always ended up being nothing. I think that has given us a false sense of security when it comes to our kids. We were pretty optimistic walking into the doctor’s office that morning. They pulled out the pulse ox machine and right away…alert goes off. After checking him out and consulting with a few of the other doctors they said they wanted to us to go over to the emergency department at children’s hospital. WHAT?! I couldn’t help it…the tears started flowing.
After arriving in the ED there were doctors and nurses flying in out of our room hooking Kellan up to all these different machines. His levels dropped down into the 70’s and they put him on O2 right away. They performed a MRI, EKG and echocardiogram. It was so overwhelming and so scary. Also, still no answers. A nurse came in and said “They have a room ready for you in the NICU so we are going to take you up there.”
Ryan and I thought this was maybe for more tests or to monitor him for a few hours but when the NICU nurses said we can sleep in room or down the hall it sunk in that we weren’t going home anytime soon.
The next few days are kind of a blur. We had to spend Thanksgiving there…away from Liam. We were just heartbroken, worried and exhausted in every way. We watched that stupid screen for hours on end seeing our Kellan’s numbers continuing to dip.
We finally got the results that he had caught a virus. Let me tell you, this kid had no symptoms of being sick. We kept getting asked how we knew to bring him in. A million thanks to The Owlet company. We were able to get Kellan the help he needed and that I will be forever grateful.
After some extremely stressful tests they finally cleared us to take Kellan home. He will be on O2 for awhile but we were just beyond happy to bring our baby back home.
