Suzi is in the hospital.

I'm copying this from my baby board, because I'm pooped and headed to bed:

After nursing her today around 1:30, I was holding her in front of me while she slept and, I'll admit it, just admiring how perfectly lovely she is, when I noticed that she kept stopping breathing. I thought surely not, and started counting and she would take 3-5 breaths then stop breathing at all for up to ten seconds. That's odd, I thought, and I called Chris in to see. We decided to call the pediatrician and were quite surprised when they told us to take her into the ER. Then we called the Blue Cross Health Line and when our insurance company also told us to take her to the ER, we started getting worried.

We get there and they make us wait about an hour (!!!) and Chris goes up with her and wants to know why it's taking so long to see a newborn who isn't breathing right. The triage nurse finally sees her form and has me come back with Suzi, and while she's taking the information and checking her oxygen levels, Suzi starts doing it again and the nurse gets quite panicky. She gets Suzi in a bed in the ER in about two minutes and there we sit until 8:30 p.m. while they monitor her and take her arterial blood and catherize her for a urine sample. It was all HORRIFIC. I could not help but cry a bit when the first nurses tried to get her blood because they dug around in her arm with that needle just like they did on my arm trying to get a vein for the IV, and I knew how much that was hurting my poor baby.

The ER doc discussed everything with the pediatrician on call and because all of her test results were great, they decided that the medicines I'm taking for the c-section infection had metastasized in her body and were causing her to sleep too deeply. In particular the Phenergan I'm taking to combat the Flagyl side effects. They admitted her for tonight to monitor her breathing and track her to see if she has sleep apnea.

When she was in her room, the nurse came in and said she's pretty sure it was a normal newborn breathing pattern. She said that true apnea episodes start at 20 seconds between breaths, and that they routinely prescribe all of the medicines they have me on, to nursing mothers and they never see side effects like this, especially at the low doses I'm on. That was a huge relief to hear, and I feel much better about getting good results from the test tomorrow.

Chris is staying with her tonight. This morning I got up to a big spot on the bed and soaked nightclothes due to the c-section weeping much more. While we were trying to decide if I needed to go back to the doctor after having just seen him the day before, Suzi had her problems, and that, of course, was top priority. But Chris didn't want me staying at the hospital with an open wound, and they had told me to pump and dump until I'm off all the meds - tomorrow is my last day on them, so that's no problem at all. Ended up that they had me nurse her tonight before I left, because I hadn't had any meds since this morning. I'll take them tonight, pump and dump tonight, then go nurse her in the morning before I take any meds.

Chris called his parents to come and get Izzy and Sophie from the ER before we killed them, but we didn't call them until late and it was about 6:45 when they got there. Still though, much appreciated, and they brought the kids back here and put them to bed. Chris called my parents to let them know and they insisted on coming up as well. Mom decided to stay with me here tonight just in case my infection thing gets worse, and to drive me to the hospital in the morning.

Physically, I'm a wreck. It was tough on my body to be there all day, and my whole lower stomach is very swollen tonight. Emotionally, yep, a wreck there too. It was a hard day, but I'm hopeful that we'll get good results tomorrow.

Keep my sweetie in your thoughts and prayers, please.