Once the initial excitement wore off, time to settle down and be a dad

So many tubes

Kat and I continued to schlep back and forth to the hospital, spending a few hours each day with Paddy whilst he slowly recovered from his surgery and pneumonia. In an attempt to get him as fit as possible before removal of the OG tube, the surgeon delayed his first feed of milk for a few days until he was able to confirm by x-ray fluoroscopy that Paddy’s oesophagus was “patent” i.e. fully repaired with no leaks. This test was carried out on Thursday afternoon which was a great relief to all of us, and meant that Paddy could try feeding later that evening. Since he still had O₂ support via nasal cannula, a central line inserted and a pulse oximeter and BP cuff, Kat wasn’t able to breastfeed him, we had to express the milk, store it in the freezer at home and bring it into the NICU. They would feed him by using a syringe or later by cupping. At first he was only allowed 5ml at a time (every 3 hours) which was obviously not enough for him, it was sadly funny to watch his delight at getting some milk and then his frustration at not being given very much. Once he was able to tolerate 5ml for 3 consecutive feedings, the neonatologist allowed the quantity to be increased, from 10ml to 15 then 30ml and after that he was allowed to feed until he was full, in her words, “like a pig!”

This is all from Kat!

Earlier in the week, I had taken the opportunity to visit the Bureau of Immigration to get my new visa. I was anticipating the familiar run around and having hired a driver to make life a bit easier, we arrived quite early. As I mentioned in an earlier post, because the annual report for alien foreigners is still ongoing, the BoI was open before 8am, I went in and started the process at window 1, and was asked to wait for 30 minutes whilst they checked my passport. I had only just started to read the newspaper when I was called back, my passport returned and I was directed to window 2. Here I was asked to leave my passport to get the visa stamp and to return and collect it from window 3 in 2 hours. I took the opportunity to pop out and get a coffee and a Danish from Starbucks and some cash from a nearby ATM. I returned to the waiting area around 8:35, and as before picked up the newspaper, only to be called to window 3 to get my passport back and then to go to window 4 to collect my ACR-I card (Alien registration card). All this was accomplished before 9am, a little over an hour after we had arrived. All I had to do now was locate the driver and head back to the hospital.

OG and Intubation tubes out

As we moved into the third week of his life we began to hope he would be allowed home soon, tubes and support were being removed, the first of these was the nasal cannula, which was replaced by the O₂ being delivered to a small funnel. This now allowed us to try breastfeeding for the first time, which was not quite a successful as we had hoped; although Kat had plenty of milk, Paddy had become accustomed to it being poured into his mouth and was therefore unfamiliar with the whole sucking concept, this was further complicated by his having a tongue tie. Still we persevered and after having his tongue tie cut, by the Thursday he was getting the hang of it and taking as much as he wanted, although it did take a while longer than with a cup. Dra. Colasito had by this time indicated that Paddy should be discharged at the weekend. In actual fact this was brought forward, despite a slight hiccup with the surgeon (who was out of the country and wanted to see Paddy on his return before discharge, but we prevailed on him to allow a follow up the next week.) to the Friday. Paddy had by now spent 19 days in hospital after his birth and we were more than happy to be taking him home.

Yahh!!

Time to breastfeed

Discharge, however, also brought about the dreaded need to pay the bill. I had been keeping an eye on the ever increasing amount this was costing and had been making payments on my debit card to try and keep up with the amount, since my card is only permitted to pay out P70,000 at any one time, I had to make several such deposits over the two weeks, but I was now in the happy place of believing that I was ahead of the game and any additional over the past 24 hours was going to be well under the magic 70k; how wrong I was. I had forgotten that so far the bill was comprised of only the consumables and equipment usage, no doctors’ professional fees (PF) had so far been included, however, how bad could it be, after all Asian Hospital has a policy that PF is heavilly discounted for fellow doctors and their family, yeah, that’s fine in as far as it goes, but if the PF is normally a lot, even the discounted amount can be a shock. Not to put too fine a point on it, the total bill and even with the PhilHealth Insurance contribution (of P37,000 of it hah hah!) was into 7 figures. Having said that, like I mentioned previously, Asian Hospital and Medical Centre is probably one of the top two or three places in the country and definitely Luzon island that you could get the level of care Paddy needed. The fact that the 4 hour surgery had been carried out on a two day old baby and without the need for a blood transfusion was on its own worth a small fortune and the costs for similar care anywhere else in the world would have been considerably higher. It is, however times like this when you miss things like the NHS back in the UK, although had he been born there, would the doctors at the local maternity unit have diagnosed the EA and TEF so quickly and would he have needed to be transferred to Great Ormond Street Hospital for treatment and go on a waiting list, all of these questions bounced around my mind as I hoped my UK credit card would cover the remainder of the bill and they would allow us to go home. Fortunately, HSBC didn’t quibble, even when it took me 3 attempts to get the correct PIN, Doh!!

Bill paid, receipts in hand we were helped to get Paddy to the car by one of his nurses, I am not sure they are ever totally happy to see one of their patients go home, as they must, despite all their efforts, form an attachment, especially with those that are in their care for a while, we will certainly miss their care and attention.

First meeting with the family

Now came the really hard part, we had been parents for the past 19 days, but hadn’t been very hands on, in fact, we had been by necessity fairly hands off. This time we were on our own with a very delicate and small little boy in our care with peculiar demands and only one method of communication that was sure to gain our attention, crying and yes, he can cry quite loudly. We hadn’t even told Kat’s parents at this stage that he was coming home, as we wanted to actually get him there before we made the announcement, which we did shortly before posting a picture of him on FaceBook in the car seat on the couch in our living room just after we arrived. This photo has already got 300 likes and many comments from around the world. The next few hours were spent, like I am sure many more days and months shall, listening to every noise he made, and those he didn’t worrying whether he was OK or not, we jumped up to check on him several times to find him happily sleeping without a care in the world, or on occasion grizzling about a dirty diaper or needing feeding (which he seemed to want hourly or so), I guess this is the way it’s going to be for a long time…….