"Taking the Leap into Technology..."

"After he was born, i noticed he had what I thought were hiccups, and they didn't stop for the first few hours I held him. The nurse came in to help my husband with the first diaper change (I wasn’t allowed out of bed after 42 hours of labour – and no sleep' followed by a painful c-section). In retrospect, I think she noticed something was wrong at that time, but didn’t want to alarm us, so she told us she would come back in a minute and take him for his first bath. In the back of my mind I knew they didn’t do the bath out of the room, and you are strongly encouraged to do it yourself…..but due to the sheer exhaustion, I agreed. After she was gone for about 45 mins, I sent my husband to go find her...bath’s do not take this long! He was met in the hall by our nurse, but no baby.

She "tastefully" said, "How does your wife take bad news?"…..WHAT??? WHO SAYS THAT???!! Anyways…..she came into our room and explained that Oliver was having a hard time breathing, and they brought him to the neo-natal intensive care unit (NICU) for observation. We could go see him shortly. As soon as the nurse left the room, I lost it?? What was wrong with my baby???

Once in the NICU, we saw Oliver hooked up to a few machines, and being given oxygen through nasal prongs. I had barley held my little boy, and now I have to look at him in a glass incubator. The Doctor told us that they think he has a lung infection, but they need to determine how serious. It could be very minor, or as bad as pneumonia. We were devastated. This isn't how things were supposed to happen! They told us they were going to do a chest x-ray, and an echocardiogram, just as a precaution.

Let me take a step back for a minute: there are a lot of things that went on that I do not agree with, as it was an attempt to keep us in the dark as to what was really going on with our baby. The medical staff did an excellent job caring for our son, and I am forever grateful, but I am still struggling with anger I have regarding the lack of information, or should I say the lack of truth in the information, we were being given. All the symptoms Oliver was showing were classic congenital heart defect symptoms. They knew from second he got admitted to the NICU that there were likely heart problems, but withheld this information from us for 3 days".