Pneumothorax

So Caleb is born and all is well with the world, right? Not really, no. We spend the day together; family comes to visit and leaves. We nap (Caleb in my arms, my husband in the chair in the hospital room). I finally talk my hubby into going home to sleep; I spend some time alone with the kiddo and call the nursery to take him for the night. I figured I'd get some sleep since I hadn't the night before and keep him in my room the next night. As soon as the nurse came to get him I wanted him back. I couldn't sleep and I was in pain from the c-section so I asked the nurse for a sleeping pill, I slept with the dead.

The next morning I woke up early, at 4am, took a shower got myself all ready and called the nursery to have them bring Caleb to my room and I was informed that my son was in the NICU. How could this happen and without my knowledge. What the hell! I called my husband and it appears that the doctor had come to my room during the night to talk to me about what had happened and couldn't wake me. He called my husband who told him to do what was necessary and drove to the hospital and sat frozen in his car terrified about what might happen. I can't imagine how horrible it must have been for him to deal with this all alone, me in an Ambien induce coma.

We went to the NICU together, my husband and I, where it was then explained to me that my son had a pheumothorax. When a baby is born at 36 weeks their lungs are not full mature and that first breath of air can cause too much pressure and burst a hole in the lung then gas and air collect in the space surrounding the lungs, this is a pheumothorax. Most of the time it heals on it's own, sometimes they need to insert a chest tube to clear the air and aid in healing or do surgery to close the hole. We were hopeful that he would heal on his own and he did but there were days in the NICU with feeding tubes and an oxygen tube in his nose, it was heart breaking.

At my husbands request my doctor arranged for me to have a room at the hospital for as long as I wanted so that I wouldn't have to go home without my son. My hubby knows from experience what it's like for a woman to leave the hospital without her new born child and knew how upset I'd be. I only stayed one extra day, I wasn't sleeping because I when I'd wake up to pee in the middle of the night I'd go down to the NICU to see the kiddo and I was getting really depressed, not to mention that all the nurses kept telling me that I should go home. Though I was more depressed going home without my son, I should have listened to my husband.