Scariest Night Ever

Last 32 hours have been a nightmare. Malin called me at work around 10 a.m. yesterday and told me Natalie wasn’t herself. She was really lax and not responding. I immediately took the bike to the drug store, bought a breast pump and went home. After spoon-feeding her some milk it looked like she started to come around. She didn’t get to keep the milk for long though. We tried a few times, but every time we tried she vomited after a little while. We called the doctor who told us to bring her in.

At the hospital (SöS) she got some routine anti-biotic treatment and they took a lot of different tests. When we changed diapers, we discovered quite a bit of blood in her feces and they put us in a room for observation. Later she underwent a battery of X-rays. The X-ray was probably not so traumatic for Natalie, but holding her tiny little body beneath that X-ray machine really broke my heart.

After getting the results from the X-rays, Natalie had to get an ultra sound examination. The ultra sound revealed intestinal invagination – part of the intestines had folded in on themselves (telescoping).

They wrapped Natalie up in blankets and strapped her to an ambulance stretcher. Malin and Natalie went by ambulance to another hospital (Astrid Lindgren’s) where the pediatric surgeons in Stockholm reside. Natalie looked so tiny and cute on that stretcher that I’d probably have laughed if circumstances would have been different. I followed in my car.

At Astrid Lindgren’s the specialist put her in another X-ray machine and the team started filling her with contrast fluid. Sometimes the pressure from the contrast fluid can be used to make the intestines sort themselves out without having to resort to surgery. She had some morphine in her drip by then, so she didn’t seem to mind terribly.

In this case it worked out, and they never had to cut her open. The procedure was done by 3 a.m. in the morning. By this time Natalie was totally exhausted from all the vomiting, the morphine and the contrast fluid procedure. They kept us for observation and we stayed the night. Today we arrived back at home. A little while ago we were, probably for the very first time, immensely happy to find that she’d done #2. A lot.