But this time, we didn’t go to Crittenton. Let me start from the beginning…

On Wednesday, Ian had his second check up appointment with the doctor. While we were there, I had asked Dr. Schnur about Ian’s nasal congestion. He told us that Ian had a small cold and to keep an eye on it. On Thursday, I noticed that Ian hadn’t been eating like he has been and that he seemed really congested. I called the doc’s office and talked with the nurses and they suggested using saline drops and the bulb right before feedings. They said, that due to his congestion, that he was breathing more through his mouth and that was making it difficult to nurse. If we still had problems in the morning, than we were to call the office.

We definitely had problems during the night. Grandpa was up for the night and between him and Jesse, they stayed up to about midnight with Ian. After that, I was up with him for the rest of the night. Either way, the only time Ian got any real sleep was when I held him on my chest while I was sitting up. Friday morning I called the Peds office again and they were saw Ian within the hour. After listening to his lungs and seeing how congested he was, Dr. Schnur told me to take Ian to Pediatric Emergency at Beaumont. Before we left the office, the doc called the Ped ER and talked with their pediatrician so that they knew we were coming in. After getting directions to the hospital, Ian and I were on our way.

Between the time we left the Peds Office and arrived in the Peds ER, Ian had developed a fever. Due to his age, the doctors in the ER ran a bunch of tests on Ian, which I was not in the room for thank god. At 11 days old, they didn’t want to take any chances, so they were checking for everything. After an hour or so, I was finally told that Ian had developed RSV/Bronchiolitis. While this isn’t that serious in adults, it can be severe in children – especially infants. Since he was diagnosed with RSV, this meant that Ian was being admitted to the hospital (granted, they said he was going to be admitted when we got there that morning, but now they knew what to treat him for), which ended up being a really good thing since he was put on oxygen around 4pm. They finally found a bed for us about 8:30 last night.

The good news is that Ian was taken off the oxygen by 6am this morning and he has been breathing room air since. Initially I was told that Ian could be in the hospital anywhere from 2 – 5 days, but he was released within 24 hours – that is how good he is doing. Granted, mama isn’t doing that great, but that’s to be expected. I would have rather he stayed one more night just to be sure, but everyone there said he was doing great and shouldn’t have a problem being at home.

So now that we have been to Beaumont, Jesse and I are happy with our decision to have Ian at Crittenton. While Beaumont may have better resources (Dr. Schnur sent us there because they had the technology to deal with problems in children of Ian’s age where Crittenton didn’t), their personal care was lacking in our eyes. They were stretched a little too thin. I first noticed this when it took them over 7 hours to find a bed for Ian in the Children’s Wing. They knew he was going to be admitted at 12pm, but they couldn’t find a bed until 8:30pm. Another aspect we didn’t like was the response time. When we were able to find a nurse to request something, it still took some time to get the item. Ian and I had been gone since 9:45am Friday morning and since he wasn’t nursing that well, he wasn’t eating. The ER techs had put an IV in him when we got there, so I knew he was getting nutrients, but they never once asked how I was doing or if he was nursing during that entire time. By 9pm that night, I was hurting and we were still waiting to see the Pediatrician on staff to see what was going to happen. The plan had been that I was going to run home after talking with the doctor so I could pump. When the doctor showed up, he didn’t want me leaving since he wanted to see if Ian would feed by midnight, otherwise they were going to put his IV back in (Ian had tore out his IV soon after getting in his bed). After hearing that I needed to pump, the doctor said he would have a nurse bring in a pump. A nurse came in about 10 minutes later and she didn’t know anything about the pump. An hour later, they finally bring in a pump without telling us how it works or anything.

I think the one thing that really got to us was they kept talking to the wrong doctor. It seems that even though Dr. Schnur called the Ped ER and told them they were coming, the doctors in the Ped ER kept consulting with a Dr. Schnaar. I have no idea who Dr. Schnaar is, but Dr. Schnur didn’t receive any kind of updates until after Ian had been taken off of the oxygen. I’m sorry, but when I continually say Dr. Schnur and he was the one who called the ER and said we were coming, you should make a record of that so you can talk to him about his patient’s care, not some other doctor that neither the mother nor the child have ever met. The sad part was, the mistake wasn’t caught until another pediatrician from Dr. Schnaar’s office came this morning to access Ian’s condition. When she introduced herself, the moment she said Dr. Schnaar’s name, I knew something was up.

We’ve been home from the hospital for about 3 hours now and Ian is still wheezing. Hopefully this will past and he’ll be fine. We’ll see in the morning.