Roller Coaster

In the last post, remember how Travis said that everything went as smooth as could be? Well it did, then we got home from the hospital and the first three days were great! My mom took Avery to Utah so we could have some R and R time with little Brooklyn. On the 4Th day of being home, we noticed that Brooklyn's right eye looked puffier than normal.

We didn't think it was a big deal because when she was born her duct seemed swollen and it just ended up going away. After about 3 hours though, her eye was totally swollen shut and seeping green ooze. I was a little alarmed and was wondering if we should take her in or call the doctor. The only problem was, if you were watching the news, you would have seen that we were having the "greatest snow storm in 50 years." We decided to just be safe and call the nurse line. We chatted away with her and in the end she told us to take Brooklyn into the ER... everywhere else was closed due to the weather.

So we braved the storm and got in our car. On the way there, I had some doubts. I didn't think it was going to be anything more than a clogged tear duct and I thought they were just going to laugh at us and think we were crazy to bring our 6 day old baby for such a minimal problem in this weather. We were the only car on the freeway and our lights weren't even doing anything because there was so much ice stuck to them. We kept moving along and made it to Children's mercy ER.

When we were finally checked in and put in a room, the resident came in and checked Brooklyn out. She seemed to be under the same conclusion as me, probably just a clogged tear duct with a little cellulitis. She left to discuss matters with her attending. When she came back in the room, it was a whole different story. She told us that they wanted to admit Brooklyn into the hospital and test her for all of these crazy bacterial infections. They needed to take her blood, get a catheter in to obtain urine samples, give her an IV and worst of all do a spinal tap to see if she had meningitis. WHAT ARE YOU TELLING US?????? I was totally shocked.

So they went on, doing their business, poking and prodding our new little daughter. It was terrible! I had to leave during the spinal, I knew I wouldn't be able to take it!

After all of that, they admitted us to the hospital and it was a long night of no sleep, nurses coming in and night feedings. Our little girl was exhausted!

To make a long story short, all the tests came back negative, which was great! After 2 days, they finally decided to consult ophthalmology. The nice doctor from some cool place in Northern Europe came in and checked Brooklyn out. She was very calm and said that she thought it was a condition called Dacrocystocele. Basically, it meant that her tear duct wasn't draining because a cyst was blocking the hole. Infection was starting to grow in there because of it. She said that if it didn't clear, we would have to surgically pop the cyst.

That thing in the middle is the cyst

You can kind of see the bulge in this pic.

The next day, we had a consult with the ENT docs. They inserted a small camera in Brooklyn's nose and they said they could definitely see the cyst. Right then, they said that she would need surgery and that they could just do it the next day! Whoa! After three days of no answers, it took about 15 minutes for them to figure out what she had.

I was really excited and scared. Excited because we finally knew what the problem was, and that it was pretty minor compared to meningitis. Also excited because I really didn't think we would be in the hospital for 5 days, and I only had two pairs of underwear and I was starting to feel kind of gross. You should have seen me, note that there are no pictures of me during this stay! I was scared too because man, she was only 10 days old and having to be put under anesthesia. They said that she wouldn't be able do eat anything after midnight but pedialite. Then the next morning, she would be the first surgery of the day. I was ready for a long, tiresome night, thinking she would be starving. Our amazing girl slept through the whole night, except when the nurses came in to give her the pedialite. She drank it right up and went straight back to sleep. Besides having to wake up to pump (I felt like I was going to explode) I had the best night of sleep in 4 nights. It was amazing!

The next morning, we were woken up by the nurses and brought down to the OR. We said goodbye to our baby, and went to the waiting room. The procedure only took 15 minutes. Our ENT came in and showed us pictures of Brooklyn's inner nose and the cyst and how they popped it. I have never seen someone so excited about puss, she is definitely in the right profession! After about an hour, we waited for Brooklyn to come out of anesthesia.

She was starving! We took her back to the room, fed her and then she pretty much slept the rest of the day. Her eye looked amazing! The docs did a great job. They made us stay one more night to observe her then we were released the next morning.

She is home now and doing awesome.

She is a good baby (knock on wood). She only gets fussy every so often, usually at night, she hardly ever cries and at night, she will wake up, slurp down some milk and go right back to sleep. We love her!

Some highlights that need to be documented from our experience:

- Beating Travis in Dominion two times in a row

- The hot ham and cheese sandwiches supplied by Children's Mercy, soooooo good!

- The Oreo shakes supplied by Children's Mercy

- Visitors, seriously, Trav and I love each other, but 5 days straight stuck in a tiny room gets rough! Thanks to Chris, John Taylor and Ben Nelson for coming and giving Brooklyn a blessing. And big thanks to Amy for coming and supplying me with enough chocolate to satisfy!

- Probably the greatest highlight of the trip, besides Brooklyn getting better, was the view we had. We had the best view of the tower next door getting built. You may think I'm kidding, but I'm not. We were obsessed with the crane and everything that goes into the construction. We would sit at our window for long bouts of time and just watch. We also made up a game called "what's on the crane this time." We could see that the crane was lifting something, and before we could see what it was, we had to guess. Travis won the most in this game, which is not really a highlight for me. Oh well. I have a lot of respect for those workers now that I have spied on them for the past 5 days.

Lowlights of the trip:

-All the poking and prodding to our baby

- The waiting and uncertainty

- The boredom

- The lack of clothes

- This may not be a low light for Travis, but Sport Center was on for 4 hours straight!

- The nights were horrible. I know that the nurses are required to do their jobs, but on the last night I about lost it! First of all the care assistant and the nurse were NOT on the same page, they both kept coming in within a half hour of each other and waking Brooklyn up. Seriously, they just needed to communicate. The babe just needed to sleep after having surgery! Sometimes I think the medical world just sucks. They are just too afraid of getting sued, so they don't use their common sense and just follow protocols. OK I'm done with this one.

- And then of course losing precious time at home we could have had with Brooklyn. I'm not going to lie, I made a huge list of things I wanted to accomplish while Avery was gone, and it didn't get done!

I don't know why our kids struggle the first week of their life. Avery had to stay at the hospital for 3 extra days because her oxygen levels were too low, and now this! Travis thinks it is a way to make us love our kids more, because after both experiences, we have loved our girls more than we thought was possible. We are grateful that nothing serious happened and that both of our girls are healthy now!

Here are a bunch of pictures of Brooklyn before the second stay in the hospital when everything was happy.. She is cute. Sometimes I bite her (softly).