Road Trip and a Visit to the ER!

You turned one week old today, and it turned out to be a VERY busy day.  We drove Bubba down to Brownsville to meet your Aunt Jenn and your cousins Maddie and Lily.  Car rides seem to put you right to sleep, and you were still sacked out when they showed up in the parking lot of the truck stop we were meeting at.  The girls climbed into the back seat to take their first peek at you, and Maddie even got to hold you for a bit.  We were wondering if we had overstayed our welcome and whether you’d have to be fed in the car, but after a quick diaper change, we packed you back up in your car seat, and two hours after leaving the house, we got home, where you woke up ready to eat.

You’re just such an easy-going baby!

That evening we had our first scare with you.  I had you lying on the floor at my feet, and when you spit up, it was bright red blood.  Definitely nothing I’d ever seen before.  I knew your mom was sore from nursing, but since she didn’t seem to be actively bleeding, it definitely caused concern.  When you spit up a second time, and again it seemed to be quite a lot of blood, we called one of the maternity nurses, who suggested we contact the pediatrician on staff.  After receiving a call back from a pediatric nurse, she decided it would be best to pack you up and take you to the ER to be checked out, so at about midnight, we hauled you sound asleep to the hospital.

The triage nurse took your vitals (which were perfect), and eventually we were taken back to a room where an RN ended up examining your mom.  Turns out you were getting enough blood from her while nursing to upset your tummy, but it turned out that you were just fine and your mom was the one needing attention.

A couple of hours later, we returned home.  You never stirred…

Over the course of the next couple of days you were introduced to the bottle so your mom could just pump milk for you and get herself healed.  You took to it pretty easily, and the only real issue was you having to adjust for the fast flow of milk.  You got choked up a few times because you were eating so fast!

We also gave you a binky (all of this, of course, way ahead of the recommendation not to introduce you to either until about 3 weeks old so you wouldn’t get ‘confused’) since sometimes you don’t really seem to need food so much as just needing to suckle a bit.  This also required very little ‘teaching’.

I wonder if astrophysics will come as easily?