Since Jack was "premature", only by 2 days they checked his sugar levels at 2 hours old. It was very low (1.?) so it was decided he'd be sent up to the nicu to be monitored. This was incredibly hard. I knew he would be fine but it just brought back all the memories with Hailey. It's such a horrible feeling being in a room on your own just hours after giving birth. Eventually after crying for a while I rang the nurse and explained that we'd had a stillbirth and it was really hard not being with him. She called over to the nicu and we were allowed to go up to be with him. His sugars were checked often and they increased to 3.6 so he was allowed to leave and go back to our room. While he was being checked out by the paediatrician he noticed a heart murmur. Without having anymore tests he suspects it's a hole in the septum. We will have to do more tests but he expects it to close on it's own without surgery. He ordered an ecg to be done the next morning just incase. We waited all day for the results of the ecg. I saw the OB who said I could go home when Jack was discharged and the doctor who would normally check over Jack said he'd discharge us as long as the paediatrician gave the ok. All we needed to do was wait for him to come and tell us we could go. Around 6 he came in and checked Jack over again. He asked if we noticed any difficulty breathing or colour issues and we said no. I then asked if the ecg had come back ok. He then said "no actually it showed dextrocardia." I do ecg's with my job so I knew what that meant. My heart sank. Here we thought we'd have a healthy baby and yet we were being told he potentially had a heart defect too. Well, he did have at least one since the hole in his heart is considered a CHD. He wanted to order a chest X-ray to see what it showed. We did it around 9 and after waiting around a few hours the nurse mentioned that there was no radiologist on duty to read it and that we likely would be here all night again. Dan went home to get some sleep and watch Lauren. He returned the next morning with Lauren and we waited until 11 for the paediatrician to come back to talk to us. Basically he said he doesn't know. The chest X-ray didn't show a mirror image like you would see in true dextrocardia but it is definitely tilted and not a "normal" X-ray. He was referring us to children's for an ultrasound, echo and meeting with a cardiologist. He was hoping we'd go the next day (the 23rd) or sometime that week but warned that with the holidays their staff wouldn't be normal and they wanted to do all the tests and appointments the same day. He discharged us and made sure to say that he wasn't too concerned and if he was we'd be transferred to children's immediately or not allowed to leave the hospital. We were sent home and told to keep an eye on his breathing and colour and return if anything was "off".
It's been a rough 11 days. I watch him closely and he's always in the same room as us. He sleeps in the pack and play or bouncer during the day and in the basinet next to our bed at night. He's a great sleeper and has made adjusting from 1 to 2 kids pretty easy. He only really wakes at night for feeding and diaper changes. We still aren't sleeping much but that's just my anxiety about all that can go wrong at night. I saw my doctor yesterday and Jack seems to be doing really well. He's past his birthweight and has great colour. She said that we shouldn't expect a call from children's until next week. She thought that the outpatient programs were closed over the holidays. The waiting is the hardest part. I just want to know what's going on with him so we can deal with it and move forward. It could be nothing or it could be something. At this point we don't know.
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