The doctor's office was very busy. The nurse talked to us for a little while and then weighed Liam. He weighs 11 pounds 1 ounce. Liam decided he was hungry so I fed him while waiting for the doctor to come in the room. The doctor finally came in and apologized saying they had been really busy that day. He listened to Liam and thought he heard just a little bit of wheezing. He decided to give Liam a breathing treatment. They checked Liam's oxygen level before the treatment and it was at a 94. After the treatment it was a 96. The doctor then said he would like us to continue the treatments over the next 24-48 hours so he was going to call and have a machine delivered to our house.
When he came back in the room, he told me that he decided to call the ER at Children's Hospital and he told them what he had done for Liam and they recommended that Liam come into the ER for observation. They said that because he was only 24 days old they would rather him go to the hospital for observation just in case. The doctor also mentioned that around 24 days was when heart problems can arise in children. He told me not to worry though because Liam was probably fine and we would most likely only be at the hospital for the evening or possibly overnight. By this point we had been at the doctor for quite some time and Liam was starting to get hungry again. I managed to help him fall asleep while talking to the doctor.
I called Sean and we agreed to meet at home and then go to the hospital together. I was very emotional at this point and trying to think positive thoughts but instead I just kept getting all choked up.
We got to the hospital around 6 and were immediately admitted and taken to a triage room. Liam had slept all the way home from the doctor and all the way to the hospital. At this point, he was, once again, very hungry and rightfully so because it had been quite awhile since he had eaten. We asked the nurse if I could feed him but she said we had to wait for the doctor to okay it. When the doctor came in, Liam was pretty upset. The doctor was trying to get some vitals but because Liam was so upset she couldn't so she told us to feed him and she came back a little while later. They monitored his oxygen levels while we were there. They gave him another breathing treatment to see if that helped any but they seemed very skeptical about how much those actually help.
After about 2 hours in triage, we were taken up to the hospital room and they told us we would be staying overnight. Again, the nurses had to get Liam's vitals and we had another doctor come in and ask us all the same questions. He told us that Liam had bronchiolitis, which is very common in children under the age of 2. When a baby gets it, it usually isn't too big of a deal and they are not usually hospitalized. However, when a baby under 6 weeks gets it, it can be very serious. Babies as little as Liam can't breathe out of their mouths very well. It takes them a lot of effort to do so. Therefore, when their nose is stuffed up, their breathing can become very labored and their oxygen levels can go down. Liam's oxygen levels had been good so far so that was good. He was very congested. The doctor told us that we could be in the hospital anywhere from 3 days to 3 weeks. I was completely shocked to hear this because I thought we were just being kept for one night of observation. Many, many more people came in and poked and prodded and asked the same questions over and over.
We were told that in order to go home Liam's oxygen levels would need to stay up, he would need to be eating okay and be having a certain amount of wet diapers (they actually weighed them), and he would need to be able to be bulb suctioned and we would have to feel comfortable doing it.
Liam and I stayed at the hospital overnight and Sean came home to sleep because the 'bed' they had for the parents was not very big. I didn't sleep much because I kept checking to make sure Liam was still breathing and the nurses came in about every 4 hours to suction Liam and check his vitals.
Fortunately, Liam seemed to have a very mild came of bronchiloitis. He never did need to get any oxygen. He kept feeding throughout the night and having wet diapers. By the morning, they decided he was ready to graduate to the bulb suction and showed us how to do it. We suctioned him and fed him and they told us it would probably be around 5 when we would be able to go home. After a few hours they had us suction and feed again and the nurse told us that as long as that feed went well, she had the discharge papers.
Zach and Patrick both came to visit us because they were working at Children's that day. Had we been admitted Friday night, Zach would have been the 3rd year medical student in our room. We got discharged around 2 and were able to come home. We have to bulb suction him before every feeding for the next two weeks. We also made a follow up appointment with the doctor for Monday.
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