Week of Sydney - Day 3

On with our story. We were discharged from the hospital on Saturday afternoon. It was very weird leaving the hospital with her. I kept expecting someone to stop me and tell me that I had to give her back to her mother. That feeling lasted for a couple months at least! I took a nap on Sunday (my mom finally had Sydney to herself) and when I woke up I went downstairs leaned down kissed my baby and noticed 2 things. The first was a rotten smell coming from her and the second was that she was burning up. I took her temp and it was 101. One of the things they tell you on discharge is that a fever in a newborn is bad. So I of course panicked and called my ever faithful friend and nursery nurse extraordinaire Nerissa (the first of many calls I must say). Then I called the on call nurse for the pediatricians office. She said it was probably nothing and to watch her for an hour and recheck her temp. So while we were waiting my mom and I decided to investigate the smell coming from what we discovered was her umbilical cord. So I thought better clean it and when I tried the whole thing slid sideways and almost came completely off. Sydney was only 2 1/2 days old at this point. This is when my panic turned to nauseating fear. All I could think of was that her umbilical cord was infected and that was a direct line to her entire body. So off we went to Phoenix Children's Hospital. We got into a room pretty quickly, they don't mess around with newborns. Thankfully she didn't have a fever at this point but if you even mention the word they have to do a complete sepsis workup. That included labs, IV, straight cath, and even a spinal tap. I have never been so terrified in my entire life. I knew exactly what they were doing to her and what it meant. Babies can die from sepsis, that is what kept running through my head. We finally got into a room at around 6 am after being in the ER all night. That night to this day remains a haze of exhaustion and overwhelming fear. Thankfully the only thing abnormal with all the tests was severe jaundice and dehydration (breastfeeding not going so well). Sydney was given 2 different kinds of antibiotics, fluids and was under triple bili lights. We knew after 2 days that she wasn't septic (thank God!) but we still had the jaundice to deal with. Also the antibiotic gave her such bad diarrhea (it literally shot across the room) that we had to stay an extra day because they wanted to watch her for that. She was admitted on Sunday night and we were finally discharged on Thursday afternoon. I was so happy to be home with my healthy baby. What a wild ride this parenthood thing is.