*TMI warning for lots of poop talk coming up in this post
I don't know if it was Nick's referral to a pediatric GI doctor on Monday that messed with my head and made me worry that there is something wrong with him, but on Tuesday Nick was MISERABLE. He hadn't pooped since Sunday, even after the doctor tried to get things going at his appointment (think vaseline and a finger. Poor guy. Good thing he is a baby and doesn't know I am sharing things like this with the world) on Monday. I tried to give him a bit of prune juice through his bottle like his pediatrician recommended, but he started choking and stopped breathing (major NICU flashback there) until he finally spat it out.
All day, he was grunting, moaning, and straining to the point where his face would turn purple and the blood vessels started to burst around his eyes. He would straighten his legs against my chest like he was trying to stand, and would arch his back while he was straining. Also, what made me especially worried was he was listless-when he was awake, he would just lay limp in my arms and wouldn't react to noise or touch (he doesn't really do that anyways, but still.) I know it was most likely a reaction to the vaccines he received on Monday, but since it was happening at the same time as his constipation, it was making me especially worried.
I was calling his pediatrician's office all day trying to get ahold of someone, but my call wasn't returned until 5:00 that evening. It turned out his doctor was out of the office that day, so the medical assistant who returned my call told me to just take him to the ER instead of prompt care. By that point Nick had finally pooped, and I know I should have taken that as a sign that it really was just constipation and followed up with his doctor again in the morning instead of taking him to the hospital, but I think one of the long term side effects of the NICU is it will be hard for me to tell if my anxiety toward Nick is justified or not. My instincts were telling me there was something wrong with him, and, if nothing else, I wanted a doctor to examine him and tell me I was overreacting and that everything was fine.
So, off we went to the hospital, and, thankfully, we were seen by a doctor right away. I tried to stress how uncomfortable Nick was that day, and explained to him that Nick is a preemie, that he has a referral to a GI doctor, and that he had issues like this that led to an abdominal X-ray shortly after leaving the NICU. The doctor checked his vitals, pushed on his stomach, did a visual assessment of his diaper area, and told me that everything was fine. Since Nick didn't react to his stomach being pressed on and did eventually have a bowel movement, the doctor said it was probably just standard constipation that many formula fed babies experience.
Even if he did have a bit of a why-are-you-wasting-my-time-with-this vibe, our doctor stayed polite and did exactly what I wanted him to do: assessed my baby and told me everything is ok. I'm sure I sounded over protective at best, and he did write a prescription for a suppository to use if needed. I think another lasting side effect of the NICU is I will have a hard time trusting a doctor or a nurse who wasn't part of our care team while in the hospital. I'm sure our ER doctor is very competent, I'm sure he deals with God only knows what on a daily basis, and I don't know anything about emergency medicine, but I immediately got the feeling that he was missing something. I wanted to tell him Nick is my third formula fed baby and my other two didn't come close to experiencing the type of discomfort Nick was feeling today, and I was frustrated that the examine was so brief and would have felt more comfortable if he would have ordered an Xray just to be super sure nothing else was going on. It's not only this poor doctor that I found myself second guessing, but I have the same feelings towards Nick's pediatricians. I do like her-she is very considerate, she has taken the time to call me personally with lab results, and is a mom to young kids herself, which helps. But still. She's not a neonatologist or a NICU nurse, and she wasn't one of my OBGYN's. If any of our NICU team would have told me Nick was just constipated, I wouldn't have second guessed them for half of a second, let alone felt the need to pull up my google search results on my phone and tell them to look again because I've just found 5 other serious conditions Nick could have other than constipation. Our eight weeks in the NICU were so intense, and the doctors and nurses were the ones who experienced it with us. All of the fear, pain, relief, and joy of the NICU are wrapped up in these people, and I don't know if I could ever trust a medical professional who wasn't at his isolette switching his feeding tube at 3:00 in the morning. Maybe that kind of complete trust can only be replicated in an intensive care unit, so maybe it is a good thing I will always be a bit suspicious and will be keeping my google searches handy when it comes to working with all of Nick's future doctors and nurses :)
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