You are your baby’s advocate. No one else knows your baby like you do. So if you know something is not right, you push until you get answers. So far there have been three instances where we had to push for an answer and I’m going to share them with you.
The first time we had to insist on anything for our baby was in the NICU. If you haven’t been in the NICU then you need to know that they play musical chairs. They say it’s all for assignment which is why they have to move your baby around in different pods. Our first move didn’t occur until about a month into our stay and trust me it was a short stay at that spot. After a few days, we noticed the pod directly across from us had nurses dressing out to attend to the babies. Another thing we noticed was there were only a couple babies in that pod when ours was packed out. At this point we were trying to figure out what was going on in that pod since our baby was so close to it.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was when we showed up one night and our nurse went to get us a chair (very thoughtful of her) but I watched her and low and behold she went directly across to the other pod and brought a chair from there. I was in disbelief as I watched her half wipe down the chair with disinfectant. When I questioned her, she said it was perfectly fine but wouldn’t tell me anything else. I would not sit in that chair the whole time I was there. My husband seen how upset I was and we had to go.
We finally figured it out….those babies had MRSA which made sense why the nurses were dressing out to attend to them. Now keep in mind, we were directly across from this infected pod and our baby was like 10 feet away. My husband made the call to the head nurse and explained what had happened and that we were not comfortable with our baby being that close. All it had to take was one mistake from a nurse and our baby could have contracted it. She was too small and we were worried.
The following day, I went in the NICU and they were in the process of moving our baby girl! Talk about one happy momma right here! She was moved to a completely different section of the NICU and we finished our NICU stay without another move.
Now on to the second instance where momma’s instinct had to kick in but this one is nowhere near the level of the first one. When we brought our baby home, she had to come home on a monitor. It was monitoring her heart beat since she had a bradycardia the morning she was to come home. The only time she was not allowed to be on the monitor was for bath time. And after bath time we had to make sure she was dry before putting it back on.
Believe me when I tell you that thing felt scary and safe all at the same time. The safe part about it was that we would know if something was wrong. The scary part for me was if the thing went off….would I’ve been capable of handling the situation? I know I sure would have tried.
The monitor did go off a couple times and scared the crap out of me. But after getting the reports, they were false alarms. But those instances were not a lot at first. After having the monitor a couple months, it started going off a lot more and I mean a few times each night. Which had me on edge. I couldn’t sleep and every time it went off my baby looked perfectly fine. She would wake and scream due to the alarm being so loud but seemed perfectly fine.
I had it in my head that she was having a bradycardia and the alarm was snapping her out of it. But I was also thinking if she was having one she wouldn’t look fine when I would go in there. It would also go off while I was watching her. So I called the monitor company and told them that the monitor was going off all the time but every time the baby was fine. The lady I talked to was trying to tell me that maybe they were real incidences but I kept telling her that she was perfectly fine and it would even go off with me standing there watching her. The lady finally decided they would swap out the monitor for a new one just in case the one we had was malfunctioning or it could have been because I wasn’t going to let it go that easy. Whichever the case, I was happy with the outcome.
As for the third instance of being my baby’s advocate, it required some doctor visits. After she was born a spot showed up on her little bum and the doctors at the hospital called it a Hemangioma (birth mark). This thing kept growing as they said it would and pretty much covered one butt cheek. In May of this year something had happened to the Hemangioma and my baby didn’t want to get in any water or have her diaper changed. After investigating, we found that it had busted open so she had an open wound on her poor little butt cheek.
Since it was the weekend, we took matters into our own hands until we could see the doctor. So we took some Neosporin and padding and placed it over the Hemangioma. We used non sticky tape to make sure it didn’t move. At each diaper change we would change out the pad as well. Monday finally rolled around and we got in touch with the Pediatricians office. Unfortunately, our doctor wasn’t in that day but we went anyway and seen another doctor. That doctor prescribed antibiotic ointment to replace the Neosporin we were using.
After a week of using the new antibiotic ointment, we didn’t see that it was getting any better. So I called and requested our doctor see her. After seeing our doctor he was worried that something else could be going on so he ordered us to stop the antibiotic ointment, wait a few days and come back so he could do a culture of the area. So we did just what he asked.
When we returned for the culture, the area still didn’t look good so our doctor referred us to a specialist. So we went to the specialist and at that time we were given answers as to what was happening.
I hope this inspires you to be the best advocate you can be for your child. You are the parent and their voice so listen to your gut. You know your child the best.