Nursing Trouble

Last night after work, Jordan was a little hot. He was over 99 degrees and not wearing a lot of clothes. He wasn’t complaining or anything, but he just kept getting hotter. By 10pm he was 102 degrees. He started hollering in a way he rarely does. He usually cries only when he’s hungry or really wet, but this time he was inconsolable. He was crying so hard that he vomited the meal from 2 hours earlier, and immediately fell asleep.

Anyway, the 102 degrees alone was enough to call the doctor, and he told us to go to the emergency room. We left home at 10:30 pm. When Jordan was first examined by the nurse it was really weird. He asked us some of the medical history (where to begin?), and not being a NICU nurse he didn’t understand terms like BPD, CLD, or PDA. It made me feel really smart to explain this stuff to a trained medical professional. Then he gave Jordan some Tylenol and a pill. He also took Jordan’s temperature. There’s only one way to give a 16 pound baby a pill – they don’t swallow too well. Also, in the NICU they took the temperature by sticking the probe in the armpit. As I said, this guy wasn’t a NICU nurse. Let’s just say that he got the pill first and then had a body temp of 103.

When you come into the ER with a baby on oxygen and apnea monitor, and a 103 degree fever, you don’t have to wait too long to see a doctor – we saw ours at midnight. He was already coming down from the fever, but he was very tired and couldn’t sleep with all of these strangers and strange things.

The doctor prescribed some medicine and would have let us go home – except Jordan is a special little boy. We had to stay for chest X-rays and blood work. He didn’t like the chest x-ray. For the blood work, the nurse said that she was going to insert an IV just in case the blood work came back and he needed fluids or other stuff. Jordan has not had an IV in many months. In fact, Jordan had an IV put in for his birthday and had one in him somewhere for almost 3 months. I convinced myself then that because he never knew life without an IV or needles (or pain), that was why he never cried. Just like he loves baby food because he’s never tasted fried chicken. Anyway, that was then. Last night I held his left hand while the nurse placed an IV in his right. I held his head facing toward me so he wouldn’t see the needle. When the needle went in, he looked me in the eyes and my heart broke. I know that that is part of being a parent, but I felt almost as if I betrayed him. Next time he gets an IV he’s going to have to look at the nurse – they are used to it. The worst part of it was that this wasn’t a NICU nurse, so she couldn’t really find such a small vein and she never placed the IV, she just got a blood sample.

The results finally came back and everything was normal. The baby was 16 pounds 2 ounces (7314 grams to those who are still counting) and exhausted. His body temp was down to 99 degrees. The mama Ali and I bickered about something unimportant on the way out of the hospital, but that was just blowing off steam when you have your baby in the ER after 2am. We got home at 2:30. The baby had already forgotten the IV and his parents quickly fell asleep.