First Hospital Trip

Well, yesterday morning was our first trip to the hospital with Reece. On Friday night he was waking up EVERY hour. At first I tried feeding him (which he doesn't do at night anymore), but that didn't help. I also tried rocking him, but I noticed that when I picked him up he cried even more. At about 3am I noticed that he was only reaching up for me with one arm. The doctors told us that when he has a bleed in a joint, you will notice that they won't want to use that arm/leg. I also noticed that he wasn't changing position between wakings which is odd. He is usually all over the place. Finally at about 4:30 I told David that I thought he had a bleed so we called the doc. She said she was on her way to the hospital anyway and that if we would meet her there at 7am, we wouldn't have to go to the ER. So we changed him out of his jammies (screaming each time we touched his arm), and put him in the car. After we got to the hospital though, he seemed to be much better. It took us almost an hour to get through check-in (VERY FRUSTRATING), but finally got to our room. While I was checking him in, we noticed that he was using his arm again, and seemed very happy. After the doctor looked at him, she felt we should go ahead and infuse just to be safe. This was a lot harder than I was thinking. I so wanted to be strong for him, but when I saw the nurses digging around looking for a vein over and over, I nearly lost it. I had to go sit down, and let David take over. After about 10 min. they did finally get a vein and the infusing went fine. I was a little embarrassed since he seemed fine once we got there, but am SO very thankful that he didn't have a major bleed. At 9mo old, that would be pretty early for him to have a joint bleed. All in all, we felt like it was a good trial run, if anything. We now know how early to come (for registration), where to go if not the ER, and what to expect. I also typed up a check list of things to take so if I'm alone, I wont forget something. I'm so thankful that David was here, and that Olivia happened to be at my parents that night. I'm hoping that when this happens again, that I can be stronger. I want to be there for him when he goes through this and not wimp out. It's so incredibly hard to watch this happen to your baby. I give so much credit to the families that have to go through these kinds of ordeals all the time.

After we got home Reece took a couple of really good naps, and was as happy as ever the rest of the day. It's amazing how babies only comprehend things in the moment. Small blessing! I'm hoping that we don't have to do this again for awhile, but we're ready if we do.