New Trick

Well at least we made it 23 days into the new year before our first ER visit. Yes, our Saturday was spent at Childrens Hospital of Dallas.

You see Maggie has not been napping very well in the morning. So she often just rolls around in her crib and plays, and sometimes if I'm lucky she'll fall asleep for 45 minutes or so. I watched her on the monitor off and on and finally she did just that. But when I went to get her up at 10 am, I quickly realized Maggie learned a new trick: She learned how to unsnap her footed pajamas, get both legs out, remove the three pieces of tape holding her tubing down, then to top it all off, managed to pop her button out. I found her asleep in a puddle of formula that was still pumping steadily out of the feeding machine. Lovely.

Of course, I panicked. Justin was hunting an hour and a half away with no cell phone service, and a quick look out the window revealed my neighbors were gone. Judging from the amount of milk in her crib, I knew that the button had probably been out since before she fell asleep. And I knew that the hole in her stomach can close up pretty fast. So I quickly laid her on the floor and had sweet ML hold her sister's hands while I tried unsuccessfully to push the button back in her stomach, all the while Maggie is kicking and screaming and I'm trying my hardest not to pass out in front of my two helpless girls.

But after several forceful pushes (I really didn't want to go to the ER), I realized the hole had already started closing and I was not going to get it in by myself. So after a few choice words (which ML then repeated to my horror- oh I will be so embarrassed if she says something awful at school!!) I packed the girls up and headed to the ER.

The good thing about having a baby with a g-button is that they take you back quickly when you tell them your baby is on 24 feed and she pulled her button out two hours prior. (I didn't mention that she's come a lot closer to starvation than today but anything to get past all the vomiting children in the waiting room, right?). The bad thing about having a child with a g-button is that it is absolutely horrible when no one can get it back in. First, the overly confident ER resident failed. She then got the attending and the head of the ER department and all three took turns jabbing the button back into my child's stomach while she's writhing in pain with no luck. "Mom does she take a pacifier," one of them asked while Maggie is pitching a fit, "maybe it will help calm her." My response, "remember when you all asked about her medical history and I said she has an ORAL AVERSION - so no, she doesn't take a pacifier." (I swear if one more person asks me if my child takes a pacifier while they are in the process of torturing her, I think I might lose it- besides, it's totally insulting; don't you think I would have thought of that myself if she did take one?).

So because the hole had unfortunately closed up a lot, their strategy was to place a tiny urinary catheter through the now tiny opening to prevent it from
closing completely. Then every 30-45 minutes they came and changed the catheter out a slightly larger one. This "stretching of the hole" went on for about 3 hours until they finally got to a catheter that was as wide as her button was. They then held her down and, after pushing for another few minutes on my now hysterical baby, decided that maybe they should give her a sedative to calm her down first because our little Maggie was still putting up such a fight and her screaming contracted her stomach muscles which prevented the button from going all the way in.

So sedative is what they gave her and, five hours after we were admitted, they got the button back in. And after the sedation wore off, they let us go. Whew.

We got her home, bathed her and put her in some zip up (not snap) pajamas. We never thought we could use the zip up kind because there was no place for the tube to come out. But clever Justin cut a tiny hole in the bottom of the pj's and fed the tube right through it. So no more stripping down naked and taking your button out, little baby.

So glad today is over. I'm now
Praying that Maggie did not pick up any viruses today because we have her 3D CT scan Tuesday and I can't stand it if we have to postpone another month. I seriously went through a whole package of baby surface wipes today because Maggie kept throwing her toys off the bed. And I also went through a whole package of hand sanitizing wipes because ML kept touching everything I didn't want her to- the trash can, the toilet seat, the floor, and all the elevator buttons. We are all going to have chapped hands from the gallons of sanitizing gel used in room 6 today...




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