Feeding, discharge for 1

Feeding with a special bottle

Our baby boy was drinking out of a special bottle called the Haberman. Like any other baby he fell asleep after having some milk on his tummy and we had to keep him awake so that he would keep sucking and finish his milk. Because of his cleft, we had a speech therapist come in to make sure we were using the Haberman correctly when feeding him. Weird, right? Yes, but speech therapists work with patients needing swallowing therapy. This was a little bit frustrating, the first time the speech therapist came to show us how to use the bottle, she forced fed him so much that he spit it up almost completely after she left. We were pretty MAD! The next day, another speech therapist came by to observe him feeding, and didn't see anything wrong with him. However, the attending pediatrician was concerned about the volumes he was taking, which they didn't tell us it was below what they expected until discharge day. Nevertheless, they asked us to bring his car seat to the room so that they could do a car seat trial, which is performed on premature babies and babies with respiratory problems. It consists of placing the baby in the car seat for 90 minutes while monitoring his oxygen level with a pulse oximeter. Baby passes the test if the oxygen levels stay between 88% and 100%. That afternoon, a nurse came in and took baby boy and car seat to perform the test at the nursery. We didn't hear from anyone until we asked how our baby was doing, and they told us he didn't pass the test. Apparently is pretty common for babies not to pass the first time so alternate plans were being made to try it again the next day. 

Discharge for 1

In an effort to keep us together, they discharged me and transferred our baby boy to the children's hospital with the expectation that he would be going home the next day. On his third day of life, yet another speech therapist stopped by to watch him feed, whom again didn't see any problems with his feeding so she cleared him for discharge; we received the same determination from the attending pediatrician and craniomaxillofacial surgeon. At this point, we were just waiting for the car seat trial, which needed to be done 40 minutes after he stopped feeding for 90 minutes ,then we were on our way home (or so we thought). Our nurse called for someone from the Neonatal ICU to come and perform the test, since she wasn't trained on how to do it. However, later that day it was her that showed up with a pulse oximeter to perform the test. This is where the uneasiness began... I put our baby boy in his carseat, and let the nurse buckle him in. She then tried getting the car seat to a 45 degree angle. Once I understood what she was trying to do, I pointed out to her that the car seat's back is already at a 45 degree angle, so she set the pulse oximeter, started the time log, left the room, and left me watching... if the oxygen level dropped below 88% I needed to call her. Then, not even 5 minutes had passed and our baby's oxygen level dropped to 58%, the nurse immediately came to the room after hearing the alarm and took the baby out of the car seat. We were not going home that day, to the disappointment of Daddy and Big Sister who showed up later expecting to pick us up and be on our way home.