At 4 am on Saturday morning, they took off my IV and took out my catheter. At that point, I had Eric wheeled me down in a wheelchair to see her. She was sleeping like a sweet angel, so we just peaked at her for a little while.
Around 10 am the doctor called us with an update. Hailey had an elevated white blood cell count based on her bloodwork but the specific tests they had done to pinpoint a source had all come back negative. He said that she had a pretty significant heart murmur that hadn't shown up previously. They wanted to do an echo to check on that. That was a little scary.
Around 2:30 pm we were getting ready to head over to see her when they called and said we were going to get to have her in our room for an hour. That ended up being the first time either of us held her! We worked on breast feeding and just loved on her. They took her back to the NICU to wait on the doctor to read her echo results.
At 5:30 there was a knock at the door - surprise! She was going to get to "room in" with us for the night. The nurse let us know the echo results were good. The blood work was still showing elevated white blood cells. The levels were pretty consistent with the day before. At that point the were trying to determine if she would need antibiotics. (Antibiotics would earn her a multiple day stay to have an IV).
Apparently the heart murmur is a common newborn condition. They said she had a small PDA/PFO. Patent ductus arteriosus is when there is abnormal blood flow between 2 major arteries. It typically closes within a few days of birth. Patent foramen ovals is a hole between the two atriums.
The evening went pretty well. She was picking up breast feeding pretty well. Sometimes she would get impatient but all in all we were having some success. It was really great to have her with us.
On Sunday morning they let us know that we were going to get to go home but that the doctor wanted to see her one more time. They ended up repeating the chest X-ray (did one on day 1 to see if there was fluid in the lungs). This time they found a pocket of air outside the lungs which he said was a possible pneumothorax. So our plans to go home were postponed. They repeated the chest X-ray. This time they focused on the area where they saw the pneumothorax. This time the X-ray was clear but her pulse ox was abnormal. So more hours of waiting - lots of ups and downs. In the end, they repeated the pulse ox and got better results so cleared us for discharge.
We left the hospital around 6 pm on Sunday night. We couldn't wait to get back to the comforts of home!
I will post pictures soon!
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