Home at last...

Home with the wee man, life was deceptively simple. Adore baby, change baby, feed baby, lather, rise, repeat. For 48 hours life was bliss then things started to change, subtly at first but change nonetheless.

Jack began to fight feeding. He didn't like to eat. Ever. I did the best I could and assumed he was getting enough. He slept a lot and was always happy when he was awake. We (again) thought we had it made. Until the morning of his one week well baby visit when he opened his eyes and they were yellow... great, the baby is turning into a werewolf.

Race to the doctor, wait forever, doc takes one look at Jack and one look at me and tells R to get Jack to All Kids and me to my doc ASAP. R definitely was pulling his load and more in those early days. Arrive at All Kids, wait for an eternity only to witness the beautiful feet of my wee man mercilessly peppered with pin pricks as they attempted to get enough blood for testing. The enormous, intimidating and unfriendly tech looks at us accusingly and announces that my child is dehydrated. I had just fed him. She didn't believe us, acted like we were child abusers. I told her exactly how it went: he cried, I nursed, he fussed then slept. We thought that meant he had eaten and was full. That's what the books all said, that's all we had to go on. She told us to go home and wait for the results. By the end of that day we would decide not to think again - ever.

We went to my doc as directed. When he walked into the room and looked at me I knew I was in for something. I guess I haven't mentioned yet that I had been crying non-stop (yes, even in my sleep) and not really feeling like eating since we came home from the hospital. I was so unbelieveably sad and tired and couldn't bear to leave Jack for more than a few minutes at a time. I just thought (see, there we go thinking again) it was normal after all we had been through to be emotional. Yeah.... no, that isn't normal.

I had PPD and had to wean immediately to be medicated (Tom Cruise need not leave me any comments) before I drowned myself or anyone else in tears. The PPD was a back-handed blessing as we discovered that I wasn't making enough milk to feed Jack and had been starving him. Mother of the Year nominee here. I was devastated that I had inadvertently deprived my child but relieved to see that he inherited his eating skills from my side of the gene pool. My relief would be short lived as a couple of hours later R came to me and told me to pick up the phone.

It was the on-call doc with the results of the blood tests. Jack possibly needed a complete blood transfusion because his bilirubin levels were so high and we needed to go back to All Kids. NOW. Immediately. Do Not Pass Go, do not collect your Mother of the Year trophy just yet.

After trying every combination of nurse and needle in the ER they finally got what they needed and we were left to wait. And wait. And wait some more. After many hours and many gut wrenching blood draws we were allowed to leave. I essentially ran out of there, terrified that any minute someone would snatch my precious boy away from me. Could I honestly blame them??

Over the next days Jack grew plumper and less yellow as he ate for real and we laid in the sun. I cried less and less as the meds worked their magic and actually felt like eating again. Nona (my grandma) came to stay for a couple of weeks. It was so awesome to have her here to see her hold my child. The oldest member of the family holding the youngest, the circle of life illustrated beautifully and lovingly just for me. I have a photo on a cd somewhere of Jack's chubby little hand in her older, thinner hand... I need to find that.

As the summer began, we seemed to have a much better grasp on things. I would be going back to work soon - a devastating concept to me - and Jack was thriving. We thought our lives had changed all they would for awhile. Yes, you guessed it, dead wrong again!