We were just in the hospital

[ms.peachy]

for the past 4 days. Me and the baby. It wasn't so great.

I was having a pretty normal day on Tuesday, normal as it gets with a 2 week old anyway. I'd been slightly worried over the holiday weekend about Mathilda as she didn't seem to go through as many diapers as all the books seemed to say she ought to; like, she'd go for a few hours with a totally dry diaper which on the one hand seems like "hey great, less dirty diapers, woohoo" but really it's not so good because, you know, they're meant to be little wee and poo machines and all. But she seemed otherwise fine and healthy and alert and all that so I didn't want to be some crazy paranoid new parent and let it go.

Tuesday the midwife came by for a follow up visit and I told her what I'd noticed. She agreed that Mathilda looked fine - birght eyed, alert. intereactive, good colour, strong grip, etc - and then she weighed her and we both gat a huge shock. Turns out she had lost almost 20% of her bodyweight! Because she's a very long baby, it wasn't so noticeable to the naked eye, but that is a huge amount for such a little thing to lose. So the midwife called the consultant and he said to bring her to the hospital for further exam straight away.

We ended up being admitted so they could "run some tests". You want to know panic? Have somebody tellyou they want to "run some tests" to find out what's wrong with your baby. You want to feel helpless? Hold your baby and listen to her cry while people are pricking her over and over to find a tiny vein big enough to put a stent in. You want to feel ineffective? Watch someone put a tube up your baby's nose and down into her stomach to give her fluids to rehydrate her. You want to feel like a total failure as a mother? Learn that the reason she's in this state is because you're not producing enough milk, and she was slowly starving day by day. Want to feel like complete shit? Spend the night lying by her crib in the hospital, wondering how you could be so stupid that you didn't even know when she was 'feeding', she wasn't getting anything.

Anyway. I know that I couldn't have known, even the doctors were saying they couldn't believe how alert and engaged she was, and how it was not surprising considerinng there were no other signs, and that I shouldn't beat myself up, yadda yadda yadda. And she's going to be fine and everything is getting sorted and we're both going to be just fine. And there were other mums and babies there at the hospital with much, much worse problems that would break your heart.

But these past 3 days, let me tell you, longest of my life.

[Qdrop]

you didn't do ANYTHING wrong.

in fact, you did everything right and took all the appropriate steps to secure the welfare of your child.

i'd say that makes you a top rate mother.

[enree erzweglle]

Oh God, how awful. How awful! I remember feeling very confused by breast-feeding--there's no gauge, there's no gauge, I can't tell if he's gotten any at all!! As if you don't have enough to worry about.

God, ms.peachy. I can't imagine how you must have felt. Thank God that you figured it out and could fix it, but how scary in the meantime. :(

[enree erzweglle]

you didn't do ANYTHING wrong.

in fact, you did everything right and took all the appropriate steps to secure the welfare of your child.

i'd say that makes you a top rate mother.(y) enthusiastically!!

I was trying to say something like that in my post and I couldn't find the words. Perfect. Yes.

[Freebasser]

Breast milk is disgusting anyway

apparently *cough*




Glad you're both ok :)

[Rock]

OUCH! I can't begin to imagine what that is like. Either way...you aren't stupid. Get that shite out of your head.
What kind of "tests" are they running? Do they have an idea on what is going on?

[na§tee]

pour wee soul.
glad to hear she's doing better now. get that breasticle juice in her!
:cool:

[ms.peachy]

Thanks, guys. I know, in my head, I know. You know? But was just hard, watching how, like, every four hours they'd have to test her blood sugar level, and the way they do that is to prick her heel to get a spot of blood. So every four hours I'd her her scream when they pricked her, just for that second, but in that second, my whole world was just wrong, wrong, wrong and I wanted to yell "stop it! stop hurting my baby!"

[Rock]

Thanks, guys. I know, in my head, I know. You know? But was just hard, watching how, like, every four hours they'd have to test her blood sugar level, and the way they do that is to prick her heel to get a spot of blood. So every four hours I'd her her scream when they pricked her, just for that second, but in that second, my whole world was just wrong, wrong, wrong and I wanted to yell "stop it! stop hurting my baby!"
If it makes you feel any better....my dad said the same thing happened to me when I was a baby. Needle after needle. And look how great I turned out.

[SobaViolence]

apparently, the same thing happened to me and my mum.
i turned out ok(i think), but your baby seems like a tough cookie.


it's beautiful to see how much you have for the child, it's refreshing.


stay strong.:)

[Kid Presentable]

Glad all's well peachington.

[paul jones]

what an awful thing to go through but glad things are better now(y)

[Waus]

Wow - that sounds really scary. :(


Just goes to further support my idea that breasts should all come with control panels.

[DroppinScience]

All the best for your baby, ms. peachy! I'm sorry you went through this, but it looks like you did everything you could to make sure she was okay. So just be glad that the doctors are taking care of it now and she's going to be fine. :)

[abcdefz]

I'm sure everything will be all right. Take it easy on yourself. (y)

[Echewta]

I'm glad everything is ok Peachster :)

[alexandra]

don't blame/be too hard on yourself. you live and learn. :)

[mickill]

I could feel my heart sinking as I read that.

Considering a billion or so things could potentially go wrong at any given moment, it's hard to know what to expect. My wife and I have both felt like we've failed as parents many times. I'm just too proud/ashamed to share every incident with people.

Our dog bit Ava on the side of her face once. I can honestly say that I had never felt worse in my whole entire life than I did that week. She was okay afterwards. But sitting in the emergency room for 2 hours with blood dripping from the side of your infant daughter's head, helping the nurse hold her down so that the doctor could dress the wound and listening to her cry and scream because you failed to protect her from harm, it's difficult to not feel like shit. And it's hard to move past it already when there's a scar left near her temple, an inch away from her eye. Now that I think about it, this feeling of regret probably surfaces at least once a day without me even acknowledging it. It sometimes only lasts a second, but still.

You'll probably need time to completely forgive yourself, but it was more or less out of your hands. At the very least, you weren't neglectful at all. Be glad that everything's okay.

[Kid Presentable]

^^^^
Fuck, it's not like you're nodded-out junkies when these things happen. I spose I won't understand why you're so hard on yourself until I have kids. Presentable kids.

[enree erzweglle]

If I could offer one eensie bit of advice, ms.peachy: never tell your Mathilda your hospital story.

me to my kid: No, I can't drive you to x right now.
my kid to me: Ah, I could walk there easily if you hadn't fallen with 15-month-old me and broken several of my foot bones and if they had only had a proper fit to the cast, I wouldn't have gotten that ensuing bone infection and then maybe kids wouldn't laugh at the hideousness of the scars on my foot because there wouldn't be any. If only, if only...

Then he'd make *pity eyes* and I'd grab my car keys. Little bastard.

:D

[monkey]

what an awful thing to go through! im so sorry. all i know in these circumstances is that you deserve a little break and a little love, which is all i knew to do when my aunt spent days in the hospital with my little cousin. so many things can go wrong when the babies are so little, yet they are so so resilient. i hope you and little mathilde feel better <3

[ms.peachy]

|Thanks for all the support, everyone. Yeah I know, it will all be okay (after a few days of a punishing routine of expressing/formula/on the breast every 3 hours) and as I said there were people going through way worse stuff there with their kids so I'm grateful that our situation is relatively easy to cope with.

So, everything I say when I pop in here over the next few days, take it with a grain of salt, I'm likely to be rather sleep deprived, milk-addled and a bit loopy:)

[TAL]

Word to the mother.

[abcdefz]

.

[cosmo105]

yikes! what a scare. it'll be a great story to embarass her with to her prospective dates when she gets older, though.

[kaiser soze]

congrats on the birth!

and happy to hear your child will be alright, kids should come with user manuals!

[Documad]

If I could offer one eensie bit of advice, ms.peachy: never tell your Mathilda your hospital story.

me to my kid: No, I can't drive you to x right now.
my kid to me: Ah, I could walk there easily if you hadn't fallen with 15-month-old me and broken several of my foot bones and if they had only had a proper fit to the cast, I wouldn't have gotten that ensuing bone infection and then maybe kids wouldn't laugh at the hideousness of the scars on my foot because there wouldn't be any. If only, if only...

Then he'd make *pity eyes* and I'd grab my car keys. Little bastard.

:D
That is so true!


Peachy, almost every one of my friends has a similar story. One didn't notice whooping cough, one didn't notice jaundice (sp?), one dropped the baby, and several didn't realize they had trouble breast feeding. The breast feeding one is the worst because at least where I live, the nurses treat you like a criminal if you don't produce enough milk. It's natural that you're being even harder on yourself because you're so smart and thus you have studied and don't expect to make mistakes. My friend with a new son had a similar problem and he's finally gotten back to his birth weight.

I'm so glad it all worked out and you're back on track now. :)

[ToucanSpam]

That was a scary thing to read...I'm thankful that everything is going to be alright though, hopefully. You didn't do anything wrong, so you can't blame yourself. I know that's impossible to do though.


Thank God everything is okay with the little peachy.

[QueenAdrock]

Awww, sorry to hear about that Ms. Peachy. I know how worried and concerned new moms can be. My mom STILL feels bad about what happened to me as a baby - apparently, I'd wake up and start SCREAMING and by the time she got to my crib, I'd be dead asleep with tears drying on my cheeks. I can imagine how difficult something like that would be to deal with, but I love my mom even more after I found out how concerned she was about me when I was a wee one. Even though it's hard to deal with, I'm positive your daughter will appreciate in the future how much you care for her now. :)

[marsdaddy]

So sorry to hear you had to go through that. They "warned" us about pink crystals in the diaper, so within 24 hours, we knew our first one was dehydrated. What we didn't know was we had to supplement with formula despite the pressure they put on women to stick with breast feeding. We learned quickly, though, and sounds like you did, too.

I cut marsbaby #1's finger when trying to clip his 4 day old fingernails. So much so, he and I cried together for about 10 minutes. I'm sure it hurt him, but I have the emotional scar, too. He has a physical scar, though it's getting less and less noticeable.

I told this story to my friend who told me about spilling hot coffee on his newborn. I felt better knowing every new parent goes through something.

[Rawr]

you sound like what my mom went through with me, except way way worse.. she lost my twin sister and i was stuck in the hospital for almost a year or something cause i was born with chronic asthma and really small so really, really unhealthy -i was nicknamed pocket mate -.- it must suck, i'm sorry you had to go through that.

[mp-seventythree]

I was born with a hernia, and cried all night every night for the first three months of my life (apparently). My parents told me how utterly helpless they felt, not knowing what was wrong with me. But once the doctors discovered the hernia and fixed it, all was good.....and they were very relieved.
And now I have a cool scar.

Glad it all turned out okay Peachy, and I hope your sleep isn't suffering too much:)

[Yorkshire~Rose]

Wow...glad everything is OK now. Big hugs from Ava and I to you and Mathilda.