One month old & home from the hospital AGAIN

**This is a long, long post with lots of details ~ so I can tell Stockton all about it one day

It all started last Monday. 4 a.m. Stockton woke up to eat. Every time I tried putting the bottle in his mouth he sucked a couple of times then pulled his head back and cried. I thought maybe he had to burp or had a tummy ache so I kept trying but he still wouldn't eat. Then he started to cough so I decided maybe his throat hurt and that was why he wasn't eating. I got nervous because he was only three weeks old and too little to be sick. The day went on and he still wouldn't eat much but he slept like he normally does. I was just hoping he wasn't really sick but Kanton had been sick the whole week before with croup, fever, sore throat, runny nose and an ear infection. I tried my hardest to keep him away from Stockton but it was a little difficult.

About 3:00 that afternoon as I was trying to feed Stockton again I noticed that he would suck better but he would hold his breath for a long time while he was sucking. So I pulled the bottle out of his mouth and watched him breathe. He would take about 5 quick breaths then quit breathing for about 10 seconds, gasp, then start over again. I started to panic and called the Doctor's office. They told me the nurse and doctor were really busy with patients and that I should come to the walk in clinic from 6 - 9 pm. Are you freaking kidding me??? My son isn't breathing normally, and is pale. Like I'm going to wait for 3 more hours. So I told the girl to go give the nurse a message and tell her what was going on and I knew she would call me right back. The girl acted really put out and said okay but if she doesn't call you back just come in to the walk in clinic tonight. I was panicked and mad but also second guessing myself (I'm retarted, I know). I called Jana and she and Vern came right over and agreed that he didn't look good. Jana called the doctor's office back and got the same girl who then transferred her to the nurse's voice mail. Jana was as mad as I was and called back and demanded that she get the nurse or doctor and put them on the phone NOW! So she finally did and they said to come right in that they would be waiting for us. By now Stockton was white and limp. I called Ray at work and asked him to meet us there.

When we got there he was still stopping breathing really often and that dumb girl made me sign in and made us stand and wait while she was staring at her computer. I couldn't believe how retarted she was! Another girl could see how panicked I was and asked if I had been helped. She told the first girl that the doctor was waiting for us and that she shouldn't have made us stand there waiting and the girl got mad and said "I'm just trying to get their bill ready!" I was about ready to rip her head off. The second girl told her to take us back and take the bill back to the room later. She was mad though and stomped down the hall to show it.

When we got into the room the nurse came in and Dr. Nichols followed and he told her to go call the ambulance. Oh man, that scared me. They started giving him oxygen because his level was 70% and even got down to 60% and a breathing treatment and then the ambulance got there. Ray and Dan showed up just then and gave Stockton a blessing. He started to look a little bit better by then. He was too small to strap to the bed in the ambulance so they strapped me to the bed and I held him. Ray came too and sat in the front and off we went, sirens and all. He got another breathing treatment on the way to the hospital.

When we got into the ER they wanted to run several tests on him but needed to get an IV in him first. My poor little baby was stuck 12 times by the nurses in the ER and they could not get the IV in. They poked his hands, arms, legs, feet and head. He screamed for almost 2 hours while they did this. I was coming apart and Ray was about ready to do the same. Because they couldn't get the IV in they gave him an antibiotic shot in each leg. Then he was poked on the bottom of his feet three times for blood samples, had a chest x-ray, a catheter put in for a urine test, a deep swab of his nose to test for RSV and a spinal tap to test for meningitis. They made us go out to the waiting room for the spinal tap and I could hear him screaming from out there. It was so awful. All of his tests came out good and the RSV test was negative so they said it was probably just a bad cold.

About 9 pm after he was calmed down a little bit they put us in a room.

He continued to get oxygen and breathing treatments throughout the night and ate and slept really good and he seemed to be doing ok. I held him all night and watched the monitors and him to make sure he was breathing. They told us we would be able to go home Tuesday morning. At 7:00 am when I went to feed him again he quit breathing again. The nurses rushed in and we had to keep stimulating him to get him to breathe. It was starting all over again and I was so scared. Pretty soon the room was full of doctors and nurses and Dr. Coss came in and said that he was too sick to be in that hospital and that they were going to have to Air Evac him to Phoenix Children's Hospital. I couldn't believe it, I broke down....again. He was poked 3 more times for an IV and still they couldn't get it in. We waited for the Air Evac crew for about 2 hours and had to stimulate Stockton the whole time to keep him breathing. They finally got there and the neonatal flight nurse tried to get an IV in ~ it was the 16th time he had been poked and finally it worked! I was so grateful to that nurse, he was awesome. They said only one of us could go in the helicopter so I went. Ray hurried home to pack our bags and get our boys situated and to tell them goodbye and he and Vern jumped in the car and headed to the valley. The flight only took 40 minutes and luckily Stockton slept almost the whole time. He was so sick and so worn out from exhausting himself from crying so much.

When we got out of the helicopter they took us into the ER. My mom, Russell, Marcus, Traci and Tandy were all there. I was so glad to see them! I would have had a hard time doing that all by myself and was glad to have family with me, especially since Ray wouldn't be there for awhile. They hooked him up to the monitors again and his oxygen level was so low. It even got down to 40% at one time. We had to continue stimulating his breathing. I tried feeding him again because he hadn't eaten all morning and he wasn't able to eat. Then the doctor said she wanted to repeat all of the tests that Show Low hospital had already done. Great, the poor kid had to go through more tests! The first thing they did was test for RSV, even though it had come back negative in Show Low. Well it was positive, he did have RSV. They said they probably just didn't get the swab deep enough the first time they tested. After about 2 hours in the ER they moved us to the PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit). The doctor came in and I told her the whole story. They got him all hooked up to the monitors again. There were so many cords attached to Stockton. He had oxygen in his nose, an apnea monitor around his chest, two leads on his back and three on his chest & stomach for pulse, etc., a blood pressure cuff on his ankle, an IV in his foot and a oximeter on the other foot to check his oxygen level and you'll never guess what they told me after they got all of that hooked up........he had to get ANOTHER IV! The nurse there told me that there was an IV team in the hospital that did only that and they were excellent at their job, she assured me it would be okay and he wouldn't got through what he had before. So the 17th poke worked too, thank goodness! So now he had an IV in his hand too. I took pictures on my mom's camera because I didn't have mine there. As soon as she gets back up to Snowflake I will get them and post them. It is so sad seeing all of the machines he was hooked up to. It made it really hard to hold him too but I did every chance I got.

It was interesting to me that every time any of the nurses or doctors came into the room they had to put a mask, gown and gloves on and they had to take it off before they left the room. They did this all day long in every room they went into so they wouldn't spread germs from one patient to another. RSV is so contagious and can live on your clothes for up to 6 hours so anyone that came to visit had to go home and change their clothes if they had kids at home to keep from getting them sick.

Anyway, I kept asking if I could feed Stockton and they wouldn't let me because they said he was so close to needing to be put on a ventilator which is a tube down the throat that breathes for them and if he ate and threw it up it could settle in his lungs and turn into pneumonia and he would have to be there for about 6 weeks. So he ended up going 26 hours without eating. He was so restless, I felt terrible for him. He didn't look like himself, his eyes were swollen and his color was bad. As soon as he finally got to eat he looked so much better to me.

Ray and I took turns staying at the hospital and going to my parent's apartment to sleep. Vern was there the first two days and helped us sit with Stockton and my mom came back and forth every day and sat with Stockton all day on Friday so Ray and I could go sleep. We were all exhausted.

When babies are this young they have a really hard time getting the thick mucus out on their own when they cough so several times a day Stockton had to get a deep suction through his nose and down his throat to suck the mucus out. He hated it and turned bright red and screamed when they did it.

By Thursday he was doing better and breathing good but that night he had what they call bradycardia which is an abnormally low heart rate. His breathing had to be stimulated again too. After that he just started getting better and by Friday afternoon they moved him out of the PICU and into a room on the floor where he stayed for one more night. They weaned him off of the oxygen in the night and by Saturday morning his oxygen level was up in the high 90's so they let us go home. We were so glad to get out of there. Coming up the rim we could tell he was struggling to breathe but by the time we got home he seemed to be doing fine.

We were so glad to get home and see Brig & Kanton. They had been staying with Jana, Dan & Evvie and Robin all week.

The next two nights Stockton was coughing a lot. It made me so sad to hear him cough that much. Monday morning I took him in for a check up and his oxygen level was back down to 74% so we got set up at home to have him put back on oxygen. We also got a nebulizer to give him breathing treatments at home. I took him into the doctor two more times this week to see if he still needed oxygen and as soon as we would turn it off his level would drop so he is still on it for now. Hopefully he will be able to start getting enough on his own soon. For now he just looks like a little old man with his tubes in his nose and taped to his face. He is doing so much better now. His cough is better and he isn't wheezing anymore. He has even gained a pound since he was in the hospital. He eats a lot!!

This was such a scary experience for us, one we never imagined we would have to go through. I'm just glad he is getting better and hopefully we can keep him well the rest of the winter. We sure appreciate all of the help we got from our family. Everybody just took over and helped us out so much in the hospital and here at home with our other boys and our animals, etc. We really appreciate all of the prayers and thanks to everyone who has been so thoughtful to call and visit us too! It is so nice to know we have such wonderful family and friends! We feel so blessed!

Stockton is a month old!