A Bit of a Scare

We had a bit of a scare on Thursday. We went to see Pat, the lactation nurse at the hospital, for help on nursing Vinny. As it turns out, he just likes to chew instead of actually suck, which explains why I am so sore. Anyhow, while we were there and Pat was trying to get him to suck correctly, Vinny stopped breathing and turned gray. Pat noticed; for some reason I totally missed it, and she whisked him out of the room and into the nursery for some oxygen. Thank goodness he started breathing again, but we still had to go to the children's hospital. I got to ride in the ambulance with him. It was interesting to ride in an ambulance but I have to say it was not an experience I was all that interested in having. Jeff and Rachel drove to the hospital in our car.

We stayed at the hospital until they let us go at around noon today. During that time, we stayed in a hospital room with our poor baby and he was all hooked up to a bunch of machines. They had to make sure that he didn't have an infection (such as Strep B), so they gave him a catheter to get some urine (pure torture for both Vinny and his parents!), took a blood sample, and even took a spinal tap. Thank goodness for us that we weren't there when they did the spinal tap, but I am so sorry that he had to endure that pain all by himself. They put an IV in his head, where the best vein was, to administer some antibiotics. But he hated that IV and tried to pull it out, so they had to move it to his left hand. He looked a little bit like a member of the Borg or something with that IV in his head.

Aunt Rachel (my sister) had been staying with us for the week, and she was a big help while we were in the hospital. She regularly brought us stuff from home, and provided a lot of moral support. And yesterday, Granny and Granddad (Jeff's parents) came to see their grandson. Granny couldn't get enough of Vinny. I was really glad that she was there to snuggle with him and give him some lovin'. By that point I was so frazzled that it was hard to do much.

After all those tests, they figured out that he didn't have an infection, and they let us take him home. Aunt Rachel, Granny, and Granddad all left at about the same time in the afternoon. In the evening, just before the sunset, we took Vinny out on a little jaunt around the neighborhood. Everyone we saw was smitten by his adorable little face. That's to be expected, I suppose, when you have the cutest little baby in the world!