After all of that, they moved me down to the post partum floor. He had had some lower temps when we were up in recovery, so they had me do skin to skin contact with him. I normally run cold, so they allowed Tito to sit with him. Once we were downstairs, they wrapped him up and put him in the bassinet. He slept a bit, then was acting like he was hungry, so we attempted to feed him. The nurse came in to check his vitals and noticed he was shaking a lot. Moreso than just shaking while you stretch. I mentioned he'd done it upstairs, so they decided to test his blood sugars. They did and they were 20 (should be above 50.) So they brought in some forumla to give to him to get them up. (He didn't like that at all...was going in too fast, and he was having a hard time with it but he did eat a bit.) Then they came in and checked his sugars again and they were lower. So they decided to give him some sugar water. At this point, the nurse took over feeding, and the pediatrician on call came in. They tested his sugars again and they were still low. So more pediatricians came in and said that they needed to get him up to the NICU because he needed an IV and to get his temp up. So Tito went with him (at this point my brother had arrived right in the middle of all the chaos, and was the poor person who got my emotional, crazy, hormonal crying after seeing my baby wheeled away to the NICU.)
The doctor came downstairs afterwards with Tito and told me they'd put him in an isolette, given him an IV, etc. They were suspecting that he either had an infection, or that he had some issues with one of the meds I'm on for my blood pressure (Atenolol) which they said can sometimes cause low blood sugar in babies. So they planned on keeping him 12 hours to watch him.
Throughout the night, his blood sugar dropped again so they increased his IV dose of Dextrose. The doc came down to talk to us and said they were still thinking infection or medication issues. They were waiting for some blood cultures for 48 hours to see if it was an infection but gave him antibiotics just in case. They said if he wasn't able to maintain his blood sugars with the level of Dextrose he was getting that the next step was to get him a central line where they could give him a higher dose without it being abrasive to his veins in his hand where the current IV is.
We had told them we wanted to try and feed him whenever we could, so they called us at about 11pm and went up and spent 2 hours with him, feeding (although I don't know what he was getting, but he latched great, and then spent 10 mins on one side and 20 mins on the other side) and holding him. We came back to the room, and slept about 3 hours, when I got up to take some pain killers, get weighed, and attempt a walk around the unit (made it one lap and then almost passed out because I hadn't eaten anything all day because of the surgery, so I'd only had Jello and apple juice and also have a really low resting heartrate in the 40's and 50's (which is normal for me, but combined with the no food, probably contributed.)
At 5am, Tito went upstairs to see Santi while I was sleeping. He got to hold him, because his body temp has regulated and is maintaining. He also got to change his diaper. :) Then Santi was rooting so Tito came downstairs to get me to see if I could feed. I'd just (an hour before) pumped to stimulate so of course when I got up there, he wasn't getting anything out, but he did latch for a bit. Then he was just sleepy, so I held him skin to skin and spent some time with him.
At this point, they are treating his low sugar seriously, because it can cause neurological damage if left too low. They are still thinking if it's the meds I took that it will work its way out of his system soon. Another option they mentioned was that his liver might not be creating the brown fats needed. So they're working on checking that as well.
We were pleased with how he looked this morning (body temp good and stable, alert, looking around, and has a good strong cry, heartrate, etc.) and now we're just waiting to talk to the docs after their rounds this morning.
This is not the way we planned this at all...but, life happened, and so we're dealing with it. We are confident that he is in the right hands, and will be fine, and released later this week with me.
We forgot the camera cord at home, but I have one photo I took with my cell phone, so for now, here is our beautiful little man. If you could send prayers and good thoughts for him, we'd really appreciate it. We just want to take him home and snuggle him and introduce him to his "sisters" - the cats. For now we've decided to hold off on any hospital visits until he's better. We're thinking that means anyone who wants to visit would just visit us all when we got back home.
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