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 :)
Showing posts with label hospital. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hospital. Show all posts
Monday, May 6, 2013
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Hospital confinement: Keeping baby sane and saving money
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.
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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