Baby J has inherited from me, the nasty habit of getting seizures when he has a fever. I've discussed seizures before, this post is about taking babies to the ER. As a nervous mom who lives 5 minutes away from Medical City and has a kid with medical insurance, it doesn't take much for me to decide to take J to the ER. We have taken him for fever/seizure 3 times, and for diarrhea countless times. Our family is there so often the floor nurses at the pedia area and at the ER pediatrics section know us already.
All this experience has taught us how to prepare for a trip to the ER. If you can't bring all of these when you first get there (emergency and all), get them immediately afterward or have someone bring them for you. SOme of these are for convenience and others are to save you money.
1. With every trip to the ER make sure you have with you (no matter the reason for going):
-a feeding bottle or sippy cup: if he is there for diarrhea they will give him rehydration salts and they don't supply feeding bottles
-a change of clothes for the baby: if he has a fever they will give him a sponge bath and he will need to change afterwards
-a washcloth: spongebaths in the ER, if you don't have one they will charge you for one
-disposable diapers even if your kid wears cloth: among other reasons, they use disposables to wrap around the area where the IV is tapped
- drinking water, snacks for the baby (cheerios are good food and entertainment): it's annoying to have to run to the store when someone gets thirsty
- sandals/shoes, socks: it will be tough getting your child to stay on the bed, they will be restless so having shoes will give them some mobility, the socks are primarily for the cold
2. Before the nurse puts in the IV tube, have her give you some time to decide where they will put it. They can put it on a foot or on a hand. If your baby walks, foot is a bad idea. If the iV will be on a hand make sure you pick the non-dominant hand (read: the one he doesn't use to play with the ipad). They do these things in a rush and don't consult the parent. If you end up at the hospital for several days the baby will be miserable if his right hand is all tied up.
3. Bring paracetamol and other medicine with you everywhere. Nurses know to ask if you have your own medicine. It is much much cheaper to bring your own than let the hospital supply something as simple as paracetamol drops.
4. Ask your resident/doctor incessantly if the IV drip can be disconnected. As soon as we knew Baby J was safe, we asked his doctor and he said it was fine. It bought J back a lot of comfort. The IV was pointless once his fever broke. They will just keep the tap open through a Heplock but the tube and bottle goes.
5. Bring chargers for your electronic devices. These are mostly to keep baby entertained.
6. If you plan to sleep at night, ask the nurses and housekeeping staff to minimize their visits to your room in the middle of the night to the absolutely necessary ones. I swear it is much harder to get well at a hospital because they just don't let you sleep! They are in there every 15 minutes mucking about. If you were not able to sleep at night, consider putting a sign on the door in the morning indicating you don't want any housekeeping visits. Housekeeping folks are noisy, they do their work in the morning so they are confident about knocking loudly and screaming "housekeeping!" when you and the baby are trying to catch up on sleep.
Lastly, sleep next to your kid on the bed if it's possible. They feel so much better when they are being cuddled and sleep very soundly when next to mom or dad. Also if you have a toddler it'll help avoid nasty falls from the bed :)
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