Boomerang baby

I was hoping that this post would be about Morgan's first trip home, and it is in part about that, but I'm writing this from the Pediatric wing of the same hospital where he was born so it's about more than that. First, the good news. Yesterday we brought Morgan home for the first time and that turned out to be a rather stressful event. First off, Morgan didn't take to the car AT ALL. So he raised a huge fuss all the way home, only calming down when Melissa got into the back of the car with him. When we did get home we had to deal with three dogs who had been couped up in the house, by themselves, for four days. The result was that we were dealing with Melissa in pain, a fussy baby, and three dogs in full bore insane freak out mode. Eventually we managed to get reasonably settled in, but it was a bit of a battle to do it.

Morgan's fussiness continued through the day, there were short respites when we could get him to calm down and sleep but overall he was pretty much angry at the world. Before we finally managed to get him to calm down and sleep he spent about three hours screaming at the top of his lungs, so upset we couldn't get him to take a pacifier or hold still in a swaddle. At the hospital they had indicated that the problem was that he was gassy so we tried our best to treat that without much success. Otherwise all the indicators were that everything was fine, he was dirtying the proper number of diapers and he was feeding every 2-3 hours.

This morning he continued to be highly fussy, so when we called to set up his well baby check I asked if we could either talk to a nurse or get in ASAP to get help with the fussiness. They set us up with an appointment that day in the afternoon. As a part of the preparations I went to change Morgan's diaper. Upon removing the diaper I found what appeared to be blood in his urine. Seeing this was panic inducing to say the least. At that point Melissa took his temperature and got 99.8 the first time and 100.4 the second. We threw ourselves together and rushed to the pediatrician.

The pediatrician started out by assuring us that his diaper was not actually filled with blood, but that the red spotting we were seeing was Uria (urine crystals) that sometimes form in small babies. The fever however, was confirmed at 101 and that puts us where we are now, in the pediatrics ward of Providence's center for Women and Children. Exactly two floors and half the building away from where we were just yesterday.

Our pediatrician, and the pediatrician that saw Morgan here don't seem to be overly concerned about his situation. It appears that the problem is most likely dehydration, caused by the fact that Melissa just isn't producing enough milk to keep him hydrated at this point. Still, anytime that a baby as young as Morgan runs a fever it's standard procedure to admit them to the hospital in order to screen for any potential infections. The chance that he actually has an infection is very small, but it's not a risk we or our doctors are willing to take.

I wasn't here for the placing of the IV line. Apparently it took two nurses to hold Morgan down to place it. He might be sick, but he's strong for a 4 day old baby. It breaks my heart to see the IV coming out of his little hand, I have to keep reminding myself that it's a necessary evil. I stoked his hair and gave him the occasional drop of sugar water while they took spinal fluid and placed his (short lived) catheter. Everything has been shipped off to the lab and we'll know tomorrow if we have anything to worry about or not. In the meantime it's IV fluids and antibiotics.

It's hard not to feel guilty about this, Melissa particularly is having issues with that. The fact that the problem is most likely that she wasn't producing enough milk eats at her. We did everything right to ensure that he was getting enough to eat, but apparently somehow it didn't work out. We counted his diapers, we talked with 5 different doctors during the time at the hospital before we brought him home, along with probably 10 different nurses and a lactation nurse and they all indicated to us that he was getting plenty to eat. Still, here we are and a couple bottles of formula and some IV fluids later and Morgan is a completely different baby. Calm, curious and not overly fussy. It's a very good sign.

During his short stint home Melissa actually managed to get some snaps of Morgan, which are clearly of much higher quality than any that I took in the hospital.









**UPDATE** The spinal fluid tests are back, along with preliminary testing on the blood an urine. Everything is clean. Menengitis, the biggest concern, is not a factor. The fever has already subsided. We will still be here for the next 48 hours while we wait for cultures to come back clean, but it's a big relief.