Cooper's First Ambulance Ride

When Cooper was 5 days old, he decided he was going to give us a little heart attack by giving us our first ever trip to the ER.

It was the Saturday night after we first came home.  A little after 1 in the morning (so technically Sunday), Cooper starts spitting up a little bit.  I notice when I'm cleaning it up off the sheets that it is black (like coffee grounds).  I know enough from getting all these BabyCenter emails that coffee grounds=old blood.  I try not to freak out, but I get Drew to look at the spit up and analyze it with me.  We think the blood is from either when his frenulum was cut on Friday (Cooper was born "tongue-tied" like Chase) or it is blood from breastfeeding.  We calm down a little, but then he has more black spit up.  We call the overnight nurse at the pediatrician's office.  They call us back around 2:30 in the morning and tell us that to be safe we should go to the nearest hospital.  I roll my eyes at that advice because, again, we know what this blood is from and I don't think it is a big issue. Drew and I are debating on whether to take him to the hospital when all of a sudden he starts spitting up bright red blood! We immediately panic/freak/cry then rush him to the nearest hospital (Methodist North).  Poor St. Francis.  They are actually the nearest hospital, but we totally forgot about them!  Drew rushes Cooper to the hospital while I wait for my mom to come to our house since Chase was asleep upstairs.

When I arrive at Methodist, Cooper and Drew are in a room.  One of the doctors is looking at him when I come in and calms us down and agrees with our thoughts on where the blood is coming from, but they will run an X-ray to rule out anything else.  Each time we spoke to a nurse or a doctor that night, I kept referring to my Target bag full of burp clothes and sleep gowns that has "evidence" of the progression of spit up on it!  I think our 5 day old was freaking a lot of the nurses and doctors out.  They kept telling us that we should have taken him to LeBonheur (we later learn they called LeBonheur soon after our arrival to transport him over there).  Well, next time if we ever have to take our kids to the ER, we'll know that we need to take them directly to LeBonheur or Baptist! We spent about 2 hours at Methodist North where he had an X-ray (we think the youngest patient to have an X-ray there!), but since no one was coming in our room we kept thinking we would be discharged very soon.  Then around 4:30, the transport team from LeBonheur comes in our room with a big, huge incubator on a gurney!  These 3 transport team members looked like they were coming from a trip in space with their big blue jumpsuits on.  I, of course, start bursting into tears.  I go from thinking my child is alright to on the brink of death because of the sight of these people and that incubator!

I decide I'll be the one that rides in the ambulance (I was in no shape to drive...it was a miracle I could focus on driving to the hospital in the first place) and Drew will drive our car to LeBonheur.  We both arrive at LeBonheur around the same time at 5am (since the trip wasn't an emergency, we didn't go fast with the sirens or anything).

Cooper was taken to an evaluation room and we then have to wait almost 2 hours to see the doctor (Dr. Simons) since there were some trauma cases that came in after us.  Dr. Simons agrees with our thoughts on the frenulum and breastfeeding blood, however she also said he could have swallowed blood during birth.  She said that blood is not tolerated well in the stomach and makes people feel nausious.  The blood will just sit in the stomach and will almost always be vomited out.  She said that if this was blood coming from the lungs or other organs that it would be almost all bright red blood and coming out in much larger quantities.

So our instincts were right on this blood, but since our poor child was only 5 days old we just had to get this checked out.  I have pictures of the spit up below so you can see how freaky it looked!  The bloody spit up continued for about 24 hours after coming back from the hospital, but luckily hasn't returned at all.

Cooper has made me a promise that he won't ever put us through this again and there will be no more emergency trips to the hospital!!

At Methodist North.  Just hanging out on a bed!

I was afraid to take a picture of Cooper in the incubator (I guess I thought I would get in trouble), but I did "sneak" a picture of the transport team putting him in the ambulance.  Totally surreal moment in my life!

At LeBonheur where they wrapped him up in a big warm blanket.  That kept him peaceful and/or asleep for hours.  So nice!

Here is a picture of a spit up that happened at the hospital.  It was the bright, red blood that had us so nervous!