Our First Week Home

So, we left The Doctor's Hospital without seeing our pediatrician, Dr. Pfanstiel.  I was supposed to call him to make an appointment for Diane to see him sometime, but I wasn't sure when.  It was all very unorganized, but we were just so thrilled to have our sweet baby girl, we didn't really think too much about it!

Jeremy had a week off of work, and of course family had offered to stay with us to help us with our little bundle of joy, but being new parents, we thought it would be wonderful to just be home, the three of us.  So, that was the plan.  I had visions of how special it would be, all three of us bonding together, but it really didn't turn out like that at all.

I was nursing Diane, and she just seemed to cry all the time.  I had heard that new parents shouldn't expect to get much sleep, and that newborns were up all the time, so I figured that what we were experiencing was normal.  Diane hardly slept at all, and she just cried.  We had taken a breast-feeding class, and they had assured us that babies only need breast-milk and that breast-milk was best.  Diane didn't seem happy at all, but I didn't connect it with the breast feeding.  On day six her little lips were so chapped, and Jeremy suggested that maybe she needed some water.  She seemed so parched.  I told him that at the class they said that babies just needed breast milk or formula, and not water, so I was sure she didn't need any water.  I later found out that Jeremy had snuck into our bathroom with Diane and dropped little droplets of water into her mouth.  He truly may have saved her life by doing that.

We were continually asking God for wisdom at this point.  Taking care of a baby was harder than I had expected, and I wasn't sure what to do.  Even in my exhausted state, I knew that God would help us.  We needed His wisdom, and I asked Him for it constantly in those first few days at home. 

On the morning of day six we took Diane back out to The Doctor's Hospital.  She was crying so much, barely sleeping, and was jaundice, so we decided we better have her checked out.  At the hospital they looked at her and said she was perfectly normal and that we just needed to make sure and sit her in the sun often because of the jaundice.  They didn't even ask me if I was nursing her, which I now know should have been a top priority question with a jaundice baby, but we didn't know that at the time.

Well, on the night of day six she was crying so much.  I had been constantly trying to feed her all day, but she was so fussy.  Late that night I noticed that she felt pretty warm, so Jeremy got a thermometer and we checked her temperature.  It was 102 degrees!  It was pretty late, at least 11:00 PM, and we weren't quite sure what to do.  Here we were, six day old parents, and not really sure what to do at all.  I was completely exhausted, because I had barely slept at all since we had brought Diane home.  I suggested we call the doctor.  Jeremy suggested we wait and take her into the doctor in the morning.  I didn't think 102 fever was good for a newborn, so I insisted that we call Dr. Pfanstiel.

Well, we were new to all this parenting stuff, and we just looked his number up in the Tulsa phone book and there his name was:  Carl Pfanstiel.  We didn't think to look up the office number, and it wasn't until years later that we actually pieced together what we had done that night.  We actually called our doctor, whom we had never met, right at his house after 11:00 PM!  And, that was when we found out what a wonderful doctor we had!

He answered the phone in a very groggy voice, "Hello." He was definitely sleeping when I called.

I can't remember what I said, but I somehow explained what was going on.  He asked me one thing, very alert at this point, "Why haven't I seen her yet?"

I quickly told him what they had said at The Doctor's Hospital about the doctor on call seeing her.  I told him how we had taken her there that morning and they said she was fine, just a bit jaundice.  But, now she was running this fever and crying constantly.  He didn't answer that, he just said, "What hospital is closest to you?"

I told him we lived in Broken Arrow and he said he would meet us at St Francis Hospital as soon as we could get there.

I hung up the phone with him, and at this point I was almost hysterical.  Dr. Pfanstiel had been very calm on the phone, but I hadn't expected him to be so serious about the situation.  In my sleep-deprived state, I was truly a basket case.  We bundled Diane up and loaded her into the car, and headed to the hospital.  I sat by her in the back seat and prayed in tongues the whole way to the hospital.  Jeremy was very calm, but I was not.

I will never forget walking into that hospital.  Dr. Pfanstiel was already there, and he walked right up to us.  I expected him to take Diane, but instead a nurse led Jeremy somewhere with Diane.  Dr. Pfanstiel quickly walked over to me and firmly laid both his hands right on top of my head and said, "I command peace into this mom in the name of Jesus!"  Then he turned and walked towards the room where they had Diane. Jeremy came and sat out in a chair next to me.  And, I was a lot more calm.  But, then we heard Diane screaming in the room, and it was almost more than I could bear.  My head was spinning from all that had occurred.

It was a long night, but we eventually learned that my milk hadn't come in at all.  I cried when I saw the few drops of milk I got after pumping for thirty minutes.  Our little baby girl had been starving, and she was quite the fighter, which was why she was crying all the time and hardly sleeping.  She was also very jaundiced, and they took her to the infant neo-natal ward and put her under the Bili-Rubin lights right away.  They also hooked a lot of tubes up to her, and put a baby mask over her eyes to block the lights.  It was so sad to see our little tiny baby like that, all hooked up to machines and laying in that baby intensive care room.

Dr. Pfanstiel was concerned about brain damage, but he didn't tell us that until much later.  He truly was a doctor sent from God, so led of the Lord. He didn't tell us that there was a strong chance that Diane had suffered brain damage, due to her being seven days old and basically starving.  No, he just ministered life to us and her the whole time we were at the hospital.

The staff at the hospital put her on a three hour bottle feeding schedule immediately.  We questioned them about this right away, because we thought it seemed odd not to feed her more often if she was so hungry.  They explained that babies thrive on a regular three-hour eating schedule.  "This way, " they explained, "the baby becomes a good eater, and not a snacker.  Babies actually grow and develop better and faster if you feed them every three hours.  After what she has been through, you need to stick with the three-hour schedule when you get home as well."  I remember wondering why no one had told us this earlier.  This seemed like valuable information.  Also, Dr. Pfanstiel gave us the book Babywise by Gary Ezzo and told us to read it and follow the schedule suggested in that book, which, by the way, was also a three-hour feeding schedule.

Diane was only in the hospital a couple of days, and she started to gain weight and the jaundice started going away.  And, I slept.  We had so much favor at that hospital.  God just blessed us so much, almost to the point where I felt guilty.  We lived only about twenty minutes from the hospital, yet they gave us our own room for me to sleep in at night.  I couldn't believe that!  There were parents at that hospital from hundreds of miles away, I'm sure, and yet they gave me a room right down the hall from Diane.  That first night I laid down in that bed and slept harder than I had since Diane was born.  I was emotionally and physically exhausted, and once I knew Diane was being so well taken care of, I slept.  All night long, I slept.

When we got to take Diane home a couple of days later, I put my nose in that Babywise book and I read it constantly over the next couple of weeks.  God answered my cry for wisdom through the words written in that book.  Oh, they helped us so much and Diane just thrived on the Babywise schedule.  It was an answer to our prayers.  God used Dr. Pfanstiel and Babywise in a mighty way in our life at that time, and I am so thankful for both of them!

Also, my mother-in-law, Barbara, came to stay with us for several days after we brought Diane home the second time.  I remember the first morning she was there, waking up to the wonderful smell of blueberry muffins baking downstairs.  It brought such a comfort to me, and to this day the smell of blueberry muffins comforts me and reminds me that God is taking care of us!  Barbara was there, helping take care of Diane and baking blueberry muffins!  A new mom can't ask for anything better than that!

God was so faithful to us!  He brought us through those first two weeks, and now Diane is almost a senior in high school!  To God be all the glory, because as you can tell, we certainly had no idea what we were doing! :) And, if you are going through something hard right now in your own life, and you don't know what to do, just ask God for His wisdom!  He will help you if you ask Him.  Oh yes, He takes GREAT pleasure in helping His kids!  For us, He used a doctor, a book and a mother-in-law.  You never know how He'll do it, but He will give you wisdom when you ask!  You can certainly count on that!

Oh, and as a quick side note, about a year later Dr. Pfanstiel told Jeremy that he wrote The Doctor's Hospital a letter about the way we were treated at their hospital.  He said he should have been called to see Diane after she was born, and that it made no sense that we had taken Diane there the very morning she was admitted to St Francis Hospital, and they did not see the signs of how severely dehydrated and jaundice she was.  I am not sure when The Doctor's Hospital closed, but it wasn't long after that, within a couple of years.  We actually would have had a legal case against them if anything had happened to Diane.  I am so very, very thankful that we had no case against them, and that because of the Lord's goodness, grace and love she is completely healthy and normal.  Yes, God is so, so good! I have so many things to thank Him for, but I could spend the rest of my life thanking Him just for that alone!  Thank you, Lord!