We went to the hospital today to check on Ethan and bring him some more milk. We had another talk with the staff. Today we had a talk with another nurse practitioner to try to find out exactly what was going on with Ethan, what was preventing him from coming home, what is the purpose of me staying with him for days on end in the hospital. I think we finally got through to them, or at least to her, where we are coming from.

She said that she had been told that I was very set on breastfeeding him and I was pushing for them to allow me to breast feed him. I had to explain that I was very set on feeding him breastmilk, and that ideally I would like to breast feed him. But considering the circumstances, I am not comfortable with breast feeding him and I would like to try it only when he is ready. Previous nurses told me that if I didn’t start breastfeeding him now, he would never learn. And that is why I was attempting it at all. I was not pushing the issue on my own. I told her that I am completely fine with pumping all the time and feeding him bottles until he is older and stronger and more capable of doing it. So that particular issue has been cleared up, for now at least.

She had also been told that I had a bad night with him the other night and that is why I needed to repeat the room-in and be coached on what to do with him. I told her that I felt very confident about the night we had in the hospital. I thought it went really well. I had an issue with him eating for the first feeding, but we called the nurse in for some pointers. after she gave us some advice, we had much better success with his feeding. All the night feedings went really well, and I didn’t need any assistance at all. I told her that noone asked me how I felt about how that night went. They drew their own conclusion and passed along information that was not true. I told her how the morning nurse chewed me out for not feeding him exactly on the schedule and how that information may have been relayed as me “having a bad night” with feeding him.

She said another reason that we have to room-in again is to make sure that we can feed him without him turning blue in the face. She said he needs to stop turning blue in the face before he can come home. OK, that makes perfect sense to me. It is scary when he turns blue in the face and of course, it is not normal. My problem is this: They are pressuring us to room-in as soon as possible even though they do not think he’s ready to go home. He still has apnea and turns blue for the nurses. If he still turns blue for the nurses, who are experts in feeding babies with this problem, that means he is not ready to go home. Why have us come to the hospital to be observed with preventing his suck apnea when they know that he is not ready to come home. If the nurses can’t prevent it, they know we can’t prevent it either. So why ask us to come up there and be observed when they know with certainty that he will have suck apnea and turn blue. I just don’t get it! I feel like they are giving us the run around and wasting our time.

We also had to explain that rooming in for several nights is really not possible for us, particularly on the schedule they want. I told her that I felt pressured into rooming in again on Friday, and that it was quite unrealistic for us to do it that soon. We have had to push back our lives, including my work, to spend so much time there. I can’t get any work done at the hospital because they do not have internet access. Therefore, I had to delay doing some work that needed to be done. I did this because I was told he would be home on Wednesday and I knew that once he was home, I would have so much more time to devote to getting my work done. Now I am behind on work and Aaron is going out of town for his grandfather’s funeral and they are pressuring us to stay again. I explained to the nurse practitioner that it was a very poor time for them to be evaluating me on whether or not I could take care of him as it is only adding ridiculous amounts of stress to our already over-stressful situation. If he isn’t coming home this weekend, I really don’t see the need for me to room in immediately. If they gave me time to get caught up with work and gave Aaron time to return from the funeral, it would be a much more beneficial situation for all of us. And it would certainly be beneficial to give Ethan a few more days to mature so that he will be less likely to have episodes of suck apnea.

The good news is that Ethan now weighs 6 pounds! He’s really packing on the weight. His nurse today hadn’t seen him in a few days, and he said he was shocked at how much Ethan had grown since he had seen him last.