The entire ManilaMom911 family stayed in the hospital from Monday to Friday while Baby J went through his illness, just in case he got more seizures. It was tough. Tough to watch my kid call out for me with pain in his eyes. Tough to wait for test results to rule out serious conditions. Tough to bully the nurses into giving him meds when his fever spikes.
The illness was not painful, but all the pricks and meds were. In all he must have gone through 10 injections combined for various blood tests and his IV. Poor little man is not a bleeder, so the nurses would often prick him once, tap an unproductive vein and have to prick him again. Ugh. It was terrible hearing his screams as they squeeze his tiny arm to try to get 2 drops of blood out.
A few tips on being hospitalized with a baby, although I really do wish nobody would have to go through it:
1. Bring lots of toys. After 2 or 3 days your baby will become very very bored. Confined to the bed with an IV means no crawling and no leaving the room. By day 3 we would walk him down the halls with IV in tow just so he can see different color wallpaper. Iphones and Ipads come in really handy, equip them with baby apps.
2. Bring lots of diapers and leave the cloth ones behind. The nurses weigh his soiled diapers to see if he is peeing enough, then they throw them out. Also bring a lot of wipes, with an IV (Baby J's was on his foot) we couldn't clean his poop in the sink so we had to rely on wipes 100% of the time.
3. When packing clothing for him, pack a diverse set. Include long-sleeved shirts and socks because it can get really cold in the room.
4. I don't know why I forgot about this, but I learned the lesson on parking when I gave birth. Somehow I made the costly mistake again. If you think you will be in Medical City Hospital parking for more than a day, have someone bring your car home and just get picked up when going home. Don't rely on the "discounted" parking for those who are admitted. We were there for 4 days and we paid close to 700! It's 190 or something per 24 hour period.
5. Bring a wash basin if you have it, for his sponge bath. Otherwise you'd have to pay the hospital for one.
6. In Medical City upon discharge, they don't tell you that you own the pillow. You paid for the pillow, take it home with you. Leave the pillowcase though.
7. A discharge by 11am means you only pay for half the day. Our doctor made rounds at 12pm, but we insisted that we get discharge orders at 10am so we can pay only for half a day. It means clearing the room by 1:30, we had plenty of time to pack up and wait for the doctor.
8. Before you let them hook your baby up onto something, make sure your pedia ordered it. They hooked my baby up to a blood oxygen level monitor overnight. During rounds the next day my pedia said "what is that doing here? take it out!" I have no idea who ordered for it, maybe it's hospital protocol. I didn't think much of it until I studied the bill. I paid more than 2,000 for them to hook it up to my kid, then another 850 per day renting it.
Moms and dads, you are your own kid's best advocate. You know if something is wrong, don't let the nurses and doctors ignore you. I had to insist several times to get medicine to my baby half an hour before it was scheduled because he was spiking a 40 degree fever and feared a seizure. Be especially insistent at night, all you are dealing with at night are these residents who themselves look like they just got out of diapers. I wouldn't trust them with a headache, and I sure didn't trust them with my child's seizures.
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