The beginning...
We tried for quite a while to get pregnant on our own. When things did not work out we chose to go in for infertility treatments. We were very open about our attempts to get pregnant and even kept a blog about the process. We started with simulate hormones along scheduled love making for a couple of months. Then artificial insemination three times, to no avail, and ended with one in-vetro cycle. We were lucky to have success with our one cycle. We implanted three fertilized eggs and became pregnant. Only one egg successfully implanted and thrived. Thirty – nine weeks later we were introduced to our beautiful baby boy.
My labor was quick and pretty normal. We started out at 5am and our bundle of joy arrived shortly after 9am. This was my third child and from my stand point things went according to planed. I did have a scare with bleeding, but the doctor was able to get it under control quickly.
Our wonderful boy was perfect in every way! Although he did some how swallow some fluid during delivery and had to be suctioned for a good 45 minutes before I got to hold him. Probably the longest 45 minutes of my life, but he was then handed to me and my husband and we just marveled in his beauty. His perfect little hands and feet.
Day two… The pediatrician let us know how the procedure would be handled for his circumcision. They came into the room in the wee hours of the morning and took our little guy to the nursery for his procedure. He was returned with a good bill of health and an excellent report from the pediatrician. Later this day we asked if we could be released to take our “little man” home. The doctors said they saw no reason for us to stay and they would have our paperwork processed. In the meantime the nursing staff came around checking in on us and completing the infant hearing test. Everything was great so we headed home around 2pm.
After arriving home… We spent a large part of the afternoon just cuddling our little man. Late in the evening we, my husband and myself, were working hard on getting him to latch on when we noticed a small blister on the top of his head. It was near the scrapes and bruises from his delivery. We called the hospital and spoke to a nurse and she advised that we call the pediatrician. We called and left a message, the office was closed.
Day three… By morning he had another blister on his inner thigh near the diaper. We called again and were told it was probably nothing but we could bring him in for an appointment. The doctor was booked and could not get us in for a few days. We went on as usual and in passing spoke about what we thought it could be.
Day five… We had an appointment with the hospital to check his weight and see how nursing was going. When at this appointment the nurse fully undressed our little man and boy was he upset. By this time the blister on his leg had burst and had a scab. She then started inspecting his body. She was very concerned about these blisters. She found one on his little hand. It was on his thumb. Well to be honest he always kept the thumb tucked in so we did not see that one. She called the pediatrician and he told her to send us to the closest children’s hospital ER. We finished our assessment of his weight and nursing. He had jaundice pretty bad and was a nice shade of orange. She then told us that he was not getting enough milk while nursing. She sent us down stairs to have his blood tested for his bilirubin count. I was familiar with this test, my middle child had to be hospitalized for jaundice years back. We were told that he would need to start immediate supplements of formula to help with his jaundice. So knowing the issues with jaundice we decided to go ahead and give him some formula. We headed to the local children’s hospital and saw a group of doctors that extracted the fluid from a blister for testing and rubbed the bed of the blister with a swab for another test. We were told to go home and they would contact us when they got the results back. We were told that the number one issue they were looking for was herpes. We were both at a loss for words. We do not have the disease, how could our child. We called everyone who visited us at the hospital to make sure they were clear as well. We went home and looked it up on the internet. Sometimes the internet has too much information. We saw pictures of the disease and immediately said this was not what he had… it did not look anything like the pictures. But we were scared. We had to wait for the results to come back and it was going to take 6-8 days for the culture to grow. After reading online about herpes and what happens when babies have it we were even more terrified.
