Mommie Dearest

To say that the last couple days have been frustrating and long would be an understatement. While April and I are both anticipating Owen's discharge from the hospital....we are both getting increasingly frustrated with the day after day setbacks that seem to make this hope more and more of an impossibility. Perhaps we became over confident when Owen was able to cover such a large amount of ground against staggering odds. When Dr. Elmo said he would be coming home soon, we planned on it. Now that there seems to be delay after delay...it is beating us down a bit.

Saturday did not consist of much. April, Brendan and I all went to the hospital and spent the day with Owen. The initial blood cultures were all negative after 24 hours for any form of infection. The nurse said they would wait until Sunday to check again and if there was not any infection, they would most likely be sending him home. Throughout Saturday he was a bit whiny again while he napped, but nothing extremely noticeable. Brendan was not thrilled to be at the hospital, but he was tolerable and easily distracted when he started to get irritable. We left that day hopeful that Sunday would finally be the day.

When Sunday finally came around, we loaded back up in the car again and headed back down to Madison. We chose not to call and tell them we were on our way because we did not want them to slip in the fact they were going to keep him longer like they did when we called on Friday. We just wanted to remain optimistic. Brendan was not loving the car ride and consistently saying
"all done" as we made our way to Meriter. When we got to the hospital, we grabbed Brendan's toys and things to keep him busy and headed up to Owen's room. As soon as we got to the North Tower elevators (the ones that take you to the NICU) Brendan instantly began to lose it. He screamed up the elevator...fussed all the way down to Owen's room...and into his room. We tried to shut the sliding door to Owen's room so that he did not wake everyone in the entire unit....but he persisted. April tried to push him quickly back out into the lobby in his stroller...and since he was not buckled in...he leaped out of his stroller and hollered in the hallway of the NICU. This was the way that the entire afternoon went with Brendan. He is sick of hospitals and he took every horrifying opportunity after another to make that clear. If he did allow us to attempt to pacify him, he wanted it to be a collaborative effort between April and myself. So if one of us did not go with him...a very loud, public scene ensued.

Outside of Brendan's theatrics...the news with Owen was not much better. Babbles let us know shortly after we arrived that Owen's temp had risen to 101.4 overnight so whether he could go home or not would be the doctor's decision. They had not rounded yet, so we listened in on their morning discussion on Owen. They were concerned about his rising temp, yet they could not find any infection to cause it. They said it could be as a result of the blood being processed through his system, but it could also be a result of a viral infection that they could not test definitively for, but he may have. Dr. Pillars (the doctor on duty who looks surprisingly like the gym teacher from the Porky's movies) felt Owen's temp was a problem as well as his pasty appearance. She felt babies should look pink and healthy not pasty. Has she looked at April, Brendan or myself? We are all as pale as vampires and have been our entire lives. Maybe, just maybe he looks like the rest of his family?!? The doctor also felt his limbs were cool to the touch and that indicated an underlying issue. She felt that his unhealthy appearance and temperature would mean he would have to stay at least one more night. They would keep him on the antibiotics and see if his temperature leveled out. If it does not level out by tomorrow, they could choose to keep him in the hospital for another full week in order to continue giving him the round of antibiotics.

The day concluded when we decided to leave after Brendan went through yet another round of angry and rowdy. I had fed Owen his bottle and he did not eat as well as I would have liked which left me with yet another factor against his possible discharge on Monday. The nurse on duty did not seem concerned about the quantity he ate...but with that amongst all of the other obstacles the doctors had pointed out throughout the day...I will be much more cautiously optimistic when we head to the hospital on Monday. We'll be doing the doctor thing sans Brendan tomorrow. He needs a break from hospitals and he will have more fun at Grandma's. I'm hoping Owen will behave and jump through all the necessary hoops the staff feels he needs to jump through so he can come home soon. April and I are eager to start to resume some normalcy in our life in the very near future.