Back to work and the big scare

I’m beginning my 4th week back to work so I thought it would be a good time for an update. To say the first few weeks back were intense would be an understatement. Day #1 back (post Crocodile tears all the way to work) we got a call from the boys school that McKay wasn’t feeling well. I picked him up early and Liz took him to the doctors. Strep throat, ugh. 

Day #3 I’m getting the boys all ready in the morning and I hear faint screams coming from downstairs or outside. I take a quick inventory. Christian is on the changing table…check. McKay is in the room with me…check. Gabe! I sprint downstairs with the baby in my arms and run outside. Gabe has stolen my keys, opened the car door, and slammed his foot inside. He was stuck there screaming “mommy, mommy”. Not having enough hands to free him I put Christian down on the wet grass next to the car and had McKay help hold the door while I slid Gabe’s foot free. My own legs feel like jelly and my heart feels like I just fed my body 20 espresso shots. I dry the baby off, tell Gabe this is why we don’t sneak out of the house and steal mommy’s keys (foreshadowing) and try to calm McKay down. He handles stressful situations about as well as me…pure panic.

Day #4 will go down as the worst day of my parenting life to date. I pray that there are not many (any) more that rival it. I picked all the boys up and brought them home that afternoon. Christian should have been really hungry because he had just woken up prior to my arrival at daycare. I sat on the couch nursing him and he was really sleepy which I found kind of odd since he’d just taken a nap. He was so sleepy that he didn’t give me a hard time when I stopped feeding him to get some dinner ready for the boys. Normally he would have been crying but he just sat there and fussed a little. 

Liz came home late that night so we all ate dinner and went right upstairs to bed. I read to the boys while Liz played with Christian. He was on his mat smiling at her. She took him into the other room and came back and asked if he felt clammy to me. I said I thought he did but wasn’t sure what to make of it. Again, he seemed super tired. Liz went to grab him a bottle and when she tried to feed him he fell asleep hard. Normally this kid can sleep-eat like a champ so that worried me. 

The older boys fell asleep fast so we left their room by 8pm. Liz asked me if he had poop on his outfit and I confirmed. The back poop blowout happens. But as she put him down to change his diaper he began to vomit hard. You get used to baby spit up but this was different. And he was choking so Liz picked him up to keep his airway clear. That’s when he went limp and his eyes started rolling in the back of his head. Liz was calling his name to no response or recognition. Fear and panic swept over me. I frantically asked Liz if we should call an ambulance and she looked at his eyes again and said yes, call call. My hands shook as I picked up my iPhone and struggled to unlock it. Somehow I got downstairs although I don’t remember taking the steps. I was telling the operator what was wrong with him and where we lived. I looked over and Liz was holding him wrapped in his blanket, the one Nona had knitted each of the our kids, and bouncing him nervously. I told her not to bounce him. I took him from her and held him outside on our front lawn. He was totally naked except for his blanket and he was staring up towards the sky but not focusing on anything. He was closing and opening his eyes while I almost chanted his name…’Christian, Christian, Christian’. This was it…every nightmare and daytime wideawake-mare that I’d ever had. I thought he was going to die in my arms while I held him helplessly and prayed Hail Mary’s. 

The ambulance arrived, took his vitals, and transported us to the same hospital where he was born. I was strapped in while I held him in my arms. I knew I was acting like a crazy person because I kept trying to say his name and keep him awake and one of the paramedics finally said, ‘mom, you can let him fall asleep. All his vitals looked good. He’s ok for now.’ We arrived at the hospital and the triage nurse was an absolute moron. She weighed him incorrectly making it look like he’d lost an entire pound since I’d been to the doctor with him last. He started vomiting again and she looked around helplessly for something to wipe his mouth with until the paramedic finally retrieved some gauze for her. I wanted to push her out of the way and find the doctor myself but I restrained myself. 

They got us into an ER room and started to examine him and talk next steps. There were so many questions about his day…did he eat normally, sleep ok, have normal diapers. One week ago to the day I would have been able to tell them every second of his day…from every time he nursed to every smile or cry throughout the day. Tonight, I could only say, ‘I’m not sure’…’I think’…’our daycare provider said…’. I felt helpless, guilty, and incredibly frustrated. Step 1 was to rule out an infection which meant bloodwork via an IV. I cringed at the thought of it but agreed because we needed answers. I could tell the nurse was nervous to try it because of his tiny veins. Turns out those nerves were warranted because she stuck him and it didn’t take. She blew out a vein. They called for the NICU nurse…aka, Cal Ripken in to play with the local high school team. She was a badass. 

Since we were at UCLA where he was born and where our pediatrician operates the ER doctors were in communication with her the whole time. She was ordering tests and checking and adjusting. They initially thought he was dehydrated. They cathadarized him (which was horrifying) and nothing came out. He was literally dry so we think dehydration was part of it. His main bloodwork came back normal. 

They admitted us to the pediatric unit. They thought it could be a heart issue such as an irregular heartbeat or enlarged heart so they had him hooked up to the monitors for our entire stay. His heart rate gets really low when he sleeps hard. Our pediatrician came to visit us and reassure us they were doing everything in their power. I liked our pediatrician in Baltimore but she wasn’t aggressive enough for my liking. Our UCLA pediatrician is super intelligent and was aggressive with all the tests. She had taken time to get to know Christian and she knew this wasn’t him. They did chest X-rays, 2 EKG’s and an echocardiogram.  An EEG on his brain waves to rule out a seizure like episode. 

I thought the IV and the catheter were painful to watch but I wasn’t prepared for the EEG. They had to put 30-40 red marks on his head, then use an exfoliating scrub to erase them, then put some sort of glue or liquid substance on a sensor that they taped to his head 30 times over. Once all that was done through 20 minutes of tears and screams he had to lay still for 30 mins while the test ran. Liz and I stood next to him and talked to him and held his binki in. I felt like the worst parent in the world. Your only real job when they are that little is to keep them fed and keep them safe. What he must think of us for standing by while these people hurt him. The mom guilt was already too much to handle day #4 back to work and all the poking and prodding were extra sucker punches. 

They kept us again Friday night and woke me at 2am to tell me a bacteria had grown from one of the cultures they originally took. He also had a higher than normal potassium rate that night so they did 2 rounds of bloodwork and the EKG. I went into the evening thinking the extra night’s stay was just a safety precaution and a way to monitor him. I wasn’t prepared for all of the extra tests or another full night without sleep. I laid next to him in this tiny crib and dozed off for a whole 20 minutes that night. I just needed to be close to him. The bacteria ended up being a contaminate that is common on the skin. They checked twice because they wanted to make certain before they did a lumbar puncture. Thank God we didn’t have to cross that bridge. The potassium ended up going down as well. Apparently when you get stuck a lot, your cells can burst and cause an a increase in potassium.

Liz brought the boys to visit on Friday night and again on Saturday. They had just fallen asleep the night of his episode, thank goodness. You could tell they were a little nervous about why he was in there and why mommy wasn’t coming home. But it helped to normalize it for them. We told them Christian wasn’t feeling well and the doctors needed to run some tests on him. Both boys have come to hate needles from their vaccines so that was the toughest part for them. I understand that some parents would have kept their other kids away from a hospital because of germs or anxiety over a sick sibling but that just wouldn’t work for us. We have always been the parents that brought their kids everywhere and did everything with them. We have tackled every fun or difficult situation together so this wasn’t any different in our minds. The Biswolds are all in.

At the end of the day they released us because they ruled out everything else it could have been and wrote it off to a bug or virus of some sort that caused him to dehydrate and have a strange reaction. We were so happy that he didn’t have a serious condition but left with an unsettled feeling because we ultimately didn’t have answers. 

We left the hospital that Saturday night very differently than we had left it on Jan 11th. 12 weeks ago we were excited to have a newborn again, to welcome him into our family, and to get to know him. Now he’s our Christian bear, he is part of every day and every routine, he’s part of our heart, and now that we know him we’ll never be the same. It was a perfectly cool Saturday night and as we drove away from Santa Monica the the sun began to set on our 48 hour nightmare.