Neev in Hospital …

It was Neev’s 2 month check-up and everything looked great except his heavy breathing, which we initially thought was just congestion, is started to bother us. We explained our concerned to the doctor and thankfully he suggested that since this has been going on for our 2 months and we should go to emergency and get him checked. So we headed to the Emergency right from the doctor’s office. We were in emergency at around 6 PM, they did a preliminary check by x-rays etc but nothing showed anything wrong. The doctors then decided to monitor him overnight and conduct more test in the morning. We were assigned a room by 10 PM. What broke our heart was that the little boy would not be able to eat anything until doctor checks him back in the morning. If this was not enough we were also told that he has to be inserted an IV to make sure he is getting the proper nutrients. I was pretty sure mommy would not be able to see piece of her heart getting poked by needles so she stayed back and I took her to a different room to insert the IV. He cried, he cried a lot but I got to tell you, what a brave boy. We came back to the room and he was calm in a little bit…thank to his binky !! Vi decided to stay in the hospital I came back to home at around 11:30 to open my fast.

Next morning 6:30 AM they did a test called Upper-GI where they feed barium sulfate to the baby and take x-ray image continuously. Once the results of upper GI came back the doctors figured that he was having significant acid reflux and that, perhaps, was causing irritation in the throat and hence the heavy breathing. The doctors advised that we mix some rice cereals in his milk to thicken it which should reduce the reflux. The doctors also advised to hold him straight after every feeding for few minutes. After the upper GI he was given milk…he loved it J. They were continuously monitoring his oxygen which was normal also. This was huge that even when he was breathing heavy his oxygen content was OK. We felt so depresses seeing him lying in the hospital crib, after all he is a little kid. He should be laughing, crying and making fuss not lie in a hospital bed …However we were glad that it was nothing serious. We were able to find a cradle in the hospital which made life a lot easier. Vi slept in the hospital that night too and I came home sleep. Next day afternoon we were discharged from the hospital…that was a relief.

Postpartum Care

While little chunky-munkey has completely consumed out lives don’t forget that Vi just went through a life time of changes physically. She is still in pain and I am so disappointed to share that the people at the clinic who were so friendly and nice (including doctors) before pregnancy are equally nasty and unpleasant now. So she had this pain for few days and finally decided to give a call at clinic on Thursday afternoon upon which the nurse said she will run it by our doctor and
get back to us as soon as possible. We waited and waited until Friday 3:50 PM (just before the clinic closes for the weekend) and no call back !! Finally I lost it and gave a call to the clinics asking why nobody has gotten back to us so far, I was told that the they could locate the doctor in last two days. Now I have two problem with this, First, the very fact we go to a clinic instead of an individual doctor because we want to make sure that incase a particular doctor is not available the other doctors in the practice can help. Second, even if you couldn’t locate the doctor its naturally expected that the nurse would call back (remember this is 2 days already) telling that she is trying her best to find a doctor. After a moment of realization these two point the nurse called back in few minutes asking that the doctor has asked that we should go for an ultrasound on Monday and gave us the appointment. Vi still think that I shouldn’t have got called but I think its their job to at the least give us the status, that’s their job. God forbid if I were to screw up on my job I am sure to have my a*s kicked !!

In any case, I am reluctant to change my opinion of the practice just because of this one incident and therefore decided against publishing the name of the practice/clinic but incase anybody wants to know I will be happy to send them a mail. After all I strongly feel its my responsibility !!

Doctor’s Visit

Little Neev is changing his habits and physical features daily. It is so much fun to go back and look at the pictures we have been taking every day. Saturday was our first visit to the pediatrician. The first thing was the weight measurements which recorded 6 lbs and 9 Oz, meaning little boy was able to recover all the weight he lost just after the birth. This was a proud moment for us we felt that we are taking good care of our little prince charming. I and Vi Dr Johnson than checked him for everything and gave him a super clean bill of health. Neev also grew 1 inch taller and got to 20 inches now, finally all that kicking paid off. He is still in 10th percentile for the weight and 50th percentile for the height. This is not necessarily a fair comparisons as these charts are based on American population and asian babies are smaller conventionally. So far we fell very happy.

Doctor’s Appt (Week 36)

Another Friday is here and we were at clinic for our regular 36th week check up. I decided to write a separate post for this as I had so much to report and won’t want you guys to miss anything. It was nothing like any other appointment we had so far; Mom had a Non-Stress-Test (NST). I believe they will do this with every visit now. NST is essentially baby’s heart beat examination for a longer duration (of the order of 15-20 mins). Apparently, just as our heartbeat increases with exercise, the unborn pumpkin’s heart beats faster when he/she moves. The NST allows the doctor to look at the baby’s heartbeats as he/she kicks or scratches. With every move, the baby’s heart beat goes up and comes down slowly. This is normal and means that the baby is getting enough oxygen and nutrient from mom’s blood stream. I looked at this as that baby is now able to regular its heart’s functioning depend upon the amount of oxygen he/she needs (ONE BIG STEP FOR THE MANKIND!!!). The nurse attached the heartbeat and contraction monitoring instrument to mom’s belly and left. Thankfully she told us that it is perfectly normal if the heartbeat disappears for few moments, essentially the little monster moves so much that the monitoring instrument can’t find him/her and you get no reading. After 20 minutes or so the Dr Mc came in and looked at the results. He was happy with the results. In fact he was thrilled when he looked at the mom’s sugar results, they looked great except one which was at 120 (still below the limit 125). So after all the little pill which he prescribed last time was working great. The sugar results lead us to the discussion on the baby weight. Of course, he can’t tell the baby weight just by looking at it but he mentioned that the Asian women generally have smaller babies and with Mom’s sugar in this case might just nudge us to normal US percentile. However, since this is just a guess he suggested that we should go for an ultrasound on 3rd November which will give him a clear idea of where the baby is in terms of size. The follow up appointment of ultrasound is 7th November when we will find out on what’s our next step.

One final update from doctor’s office is about the Group-B test we had last week. The test results were normal, one more thing out of the way.

We both are so much looking forward to it, several times a day we will be like ..please come out already !!! I am at a stage where my nervousness is all gone, I think the thought of holding my baby overcomes everything.

Deepawali is next week; we are missing home a lot. We will definitely make a trip to temple and also to the grocery store in Cleveland to get the Laxmi Pooja Samgree.