Discharge baby from Hospital

[AllesAusLiebe]

Hi, I know that this is a really contentious topic, but please bear with me......

So, I’m in hospital with my son. He was admitted last night after I called 111 in a panic. He’s only 5 days old, I tried to wake him up for a feed and he appeared listless and felt like he had a high fever.

Whilst making the call, he woke up bright-eyed and I apologised to the call handler for wasting their time and explained that I’m a very anxious 1st time mother of a very much treasured ivf baby. She still insisted that an ambulance was called just in case.

Paramedics arrived and measured his temperature at 39 degrees.

On arrival to hospital, my little son has been through quite an ordeal. He’s had bloods taken, antibiotics and a lumbar puncture.

Bloods have returned normal, vitals are normal and ever since admission (despite not being given anything to regulate it), his temperature has been completely normal.

I’ve just spoken to the doctor who believes he should stay here for another 48 hours until the cultures from the lumber puncture have been observed.

I’d very much rather we went home for a number of reasons:

1. I’m recovering from a c section and my stitches are extremely sore and not going to fare well with this bed they’ve given me to sleep on.
2. I’m still persevering with breastfeeding, despite a very difficult start. I feel that being at home is much more conducive to success. I’ve also got an appointment with a specialist today which I obviously won’t be able to attend if I’m in here.
3. I feel strongly that the temperature the paramedics took was anomalous and other evidence suggests that all is well. The initial analysis of the lumber puncture material was normal.
4. I was only discharged from hospital after my c section on Tuesday night. My son was really unsettled in here overnight.

If you’ve got this far - thanks, i really appreciate that! Do I have any options or am I stuck here?

When my baby was in for sepsis DH and I swapped about. I did nights but often went home for a few hours during the day whilst he stayed in. You can even leave the baby alone and go home (1 mum did that - I assume other kids at home) and just come back to visit.

I’m a childrens nurse and trust me we really don’t keep babies in unless we have to, we are always over cautious with babies especially newborns as they can go downhill very quickly.

It’s hard being in, I’ve been there as a parent as well. Definitely swap with your DH so you can get some rest. They may not let you have a full sized bed though, depends on the size of the room. Our priority has to be being able to get to the patient in an emergency and get round the cot. Believe me when I tell you I have thrown furniture out the way before to get to a sick child.

I hope they get the results back soon, blood cultures take a couple of days to come back. Make sure you’re being fed, do they have a kitchen you can get a cup of tea? Can your DH bring things in? Without wanting to generalise Dads often bring in the worst assortment of clothes for the Mums, it can be quite funny. Also as you have a newborn and are bf you should get fed, but check with the nurses. Also check if they have a bf support and a pump you can use in the meantime to get your supply up. I hope you get discharged soon.

Please don't worry about the breastfeeding support workers being sick of you... you and your son need the support. If they can help getting conditions optimal for you and protecting your prolactin levels, this will give you both the best chance of maintainingetting breastfeeding. They may also be able to influence the powers that be to ensure you get what you need in terms of a bed and food.

How is your baby doing?

@AllesAusLiebe Hope you are all ok. Thinking about you

We had an almost identical scenario with DC3, but he was 3 weeks old. Not to scare you but it turned out to be viral meningitis, and we very much needed to be there. I think you should stay where you are. When we were in the nurses were very quick to give me a hospital breast pump, which meant I could express and keep my supply up (because DC was so sleepy and not feeding a lot). He ended up needing tube feeding for a day and they were able to use my expressed milk. Good luck to you

Exactly same thing happened to me when my baby was 2 weeks old. They administer 48 hours worth of antibiotics just to be safe and also a certain blood test they do takes 2 days to come back. It was vile I stayed awake for 3 days straight but it had to be done.

It's a tough time for you right now but it's better to be safe than sorry, my ds was taken into hospital at 8days old and all the same tests as yours did, including a lumber puncture, which I wasn't even allowed to be in the room for, I'd also had a c section and had his twin brother at home so it was extra hard having to leave him there.
It turned out he had a urine infection and had to stay in hospital for 7 days on antibiotics, stick it out the doctors know what they're doing.

Please don't be embarrassed about 'still' needing help with feeding. It can take a while to get used to each other, positions that work and how to latch fully. It is a skill and if your milk has only just come in it is very early days. For the first 6 weeks breast feeding was horrendous in my experience. But we went on to do it for 20 months and I am so proud I persevered.

Also, people re-lactate after weeks of not feeding, so it does not have to be an end to your journey because you are in hospital. Not easy obviously, but try not to worry about that.

Lots of scary new things happening here. The doctors know best. Only when they are satisfied all things are ruled out will they discharge.
Hunker down and make the best if it.. nothing wrong with shifts with dh. Breast feeding sometimes takes time and the odd bottle of formula will not ruin your chances. You could try expressing at home when dh is at hospital but it is important you look after yourself too..c sections hurt so rest is important. Is the side ward single or multiple beds?

Are you still under the care of your midwives? I would ring their emergency number and explain the situation, maybe they could help the children’s Ward realise they need to better accommodate you as a postpartum mum!

How are you both doing now? Hope you get to go home soon.

A fever in a baby under 6 months is a medical emergency.

Babies that young should still be protected by maternal antibodies from pregnancy and/or breastfeeding.

To give you a more complete picture, if I were a nurse in a remote community and your baby came in with a fever at 5 days old, I would be sending him out by air ambulance to a hospital.

PLEASE do not go home.

You poor thing! I'm sure everyone has now said it but they don't keep babies in for the fun of it. They'll send you home as soon aa they are no longer worried at all. You're probably right and it's nothing to worry about but for peace of mind please stay.
Thats not to say you have to stay. Definitely take turns. Especially on nights. You are tired and just had surgery. Go home tonight and you'll probably be back at 6 tomorrow anyway!
The fold out beds are just what parents are given. But if they have a spare bed I'm sure they won't mind lending it to you. You can but ask!
With breastfeeding- it took me weeks to get it right. "Luckily" my DD had very mild jaundice so the midwives came nearly everyday. I needed someone to tell me every day how to do it for a while. No one is going to get fed up with you! Why do you think breastfeeding experts are so popular!

Cut yourself some slack. You've been through a really difficult time.

We had to return to hospital with DD as inpatients for 10 days after she was born due to jaundice. I hated it at the time but now I am glad they were so cautious. Try and get things brought to you to make you comfortable and resign yourself to just being there to make sure your LO is ok.

It took me 2 weeks to get that latch and tried everything under the sun and got hospital support for a full week. Pls don’t me embarrassed.contsct me if u want suppprt

Hi guys, just a quick update. . .

We’re all home now and DS has been discharged. I had another chat to the doctor after my last post and she agreed that I could take him home on the proviso that I brought him back twice a day for the administering of his antibiotics. This was a suggestion I’d made in the hope of achieving a compromise, so I was quite surprised when it was agreed to.

So, we’ve done our final visit tonight and he had some further blood work which confirmed the all clear. Preliminary results from the lumbar puncture suggest that all is fine, but they’re still monitoring to see if the cultures grow. I’ve been given some temperature strips and also told to bring him straight back if I’ve any concerns.

I followed the advice (thanks everyone) and asked to speak to a breastfeeding support worker. She was really helpful and has agreed to help me out on an on going basis, too, starting tomorrow. I’m still really struggling, but it’s good to know that I’ll have some help. I’m questioning whether to continue at all but hopefully after some support, whatever I decide will be well considered and I’ll be able to settle in the knowledge that I’ve tried everything to make it work.

I can’t thank you all enough for helping me to see sense. The nurse told me today that they suspected he had sepsis, which could be fatal. I just didn’t appreciate the seriousness.

Now hopefully we can start to settle into our new life as a family.

just saw your update and so glad your baby is getting better.

OP most of us found breastfeeding really hard in those early weeks, I remember going for a breastfeeding drop in on about day 7 only to find the location and time had changed and they hadn't updated my leaflet. I literally sat on the curb and burst into tears. I needed them and I now knew I had to wait a week. In the end I breastfed DS for nearly 2 years and when I finally made it to the breastfeeding drop in I also made some very good friends, one of whom is godmother to dd2.

My point being that its worth persevering and its normal to find it tough. You can breastfeed your baby, your body was made to do it! However if you dont manage it thats fine and he will thrive!

Congrats on your baby OP and hopefully you are all over the worst of it. Make sure to take care of yourself too, took my hormones forever to settle down after emergency c section and baby kept falling asleep at my nipple instead of feeding but managed to mix feed for 5 weeks (with expressing and bottles) until mt supply dried up. If babba has had colostrum from you that is the main source of immunity so you should not beat yourself up if you decide not to continue bfeeding. All the best to you.

Bf is the hardest thing I've ever done. It took three of the longest weeks of my life to get into it but now I'm so glad I did it. For some women, it does hurt at the start even if you're doing it right and you just need to get used to it. The line that if it hurts you're doing it wrong is extremely unhelpful IMO. Also, for what it's worth, if baby is gaining weight and having enough wet and dirty nappies, don't stress about the latch too much. Mine does not have a textbook latch and never has. But we're both comfortable now and she's a great weight.

If you're considering quitting, try everything else first. Nipple shields, expressing and bottle feeding to give nips a rest, painkillers, nursing pillows, every hold under the sun, skin to skin, standing up to latch and nurse etc. I couldn't lean back to nurse as baby doesn't like it, so I lean forward like you're not supposed to... I think nursing is quite individual and at the start they tell you there is a right way and that's that. I'm sure their way is the best way, but it's not the only way. Find what works for you.

I'm glad your LO is out of hospital. Congratulations on your new baby :)

Breastfeeding was tough for the first six weeks for us (tongue tie plus prem baby with low blood sugars so not much strength to suck).

DS needed top up EBM feeds for his low blood sugars anyway, so we did take it in shifts (I would do the 3am and 9am feeds and DH would do the 6am feed before he went to work so I used to get six hours’ sleep).

It worked fine, no problems with supply as I was expressing. Quite the opposite, I had oversupply! And we are still feeding at 18mo. Those first few weeks are really hard, and the hormones make everything seem so much harder.

Oh lovely news. So glad you are home x

Glad you're home OP.

I found BFing very difficult for the first two months or so - one night DH woke up at 3am to find the baby latched on and me sobbing. A BF counsellor thought her latch was fine, no other issues that we knew of, it was just very tough. More so because all the "natural" language around it made me assume that it'd be the easiest thing in the world.

What helped me was lots of Lansinoh after every feed, the "flipple technique" to get a deeper latch (Google for videos) and, frankly, introducing one bottle of formula p/day at 5/6 weeks so my nipples had time to recover. It suddenly got easier, and I breastfed until a year when DD decided she didn't want to anymore.