I guess they don’t tell you everything in birthing class.

After all of our visitors left the first night in the hospital, we were finally able to spend some time with Gray. Dibs was obviously worn out, as was I, so we passed out pretty quickly.

A couple of hours after being asleep for a bit, I woke up to the sound of Grayson coughing. I walked over to his bassinet, and saw him coughing up blood. Yep, there’s my son, alive for only a few hours coughing up blood. Awesome. I’m still not exactly sure how I was able to stay calm during this. I grabbed the suction ball thing, and immediately started suctioning out his mouth. Dibs woke up and saw me shoving the suction ball thing in Gray’s mouth, putting him on his side and calming him down.

Not really the thing a new mom wants to see when she wakes up.

She pushes the nurses button, tells them what’s going on, a nurse comes in and there I am holding him. She wasn’t too keen on the fact that I was holding him, either. She takes him from me put him on his side and starts doing what I’ve already done.

The nurse sort of yelled at me for holding him, even though I’ve already done what they’re doing. That’s right, I paid attention on how to use the suction ball thing.

She tells me that if it happens again to pull this string in the bathroom. About an hour or so later, Dibs wakes up and sees Gray coughing up blood. This time it’s a lot more blood. She tries to get to him, but she’s had an epidural, so her legs aren’t really moving well. She wakes me up, and I start to do the same suction routine. I pull the string in the bathroom.

Next time someone tells you to pull a string in the bathroom, you should ask, “What does this string do?” I failed to do this. It’s the emergency string. BOOM! A team of people come rushing in, push me out of the way and start working on Grayson.

“He’s fine,” they say as they look at me with a confused face. Of course he’s fine now, I used the suction ball thing again. Hello?! “Why did you pull the emergency string,” they ask? Um, because y’all didn’t tell me it was the emergency string. They tell me that if it happens again, then I should do the same thing, and call the nurse like we did last time. Wow, let’s get it together, folks.

Well, an hour later, Grayson starts coughing up blood… AGAIN! I go through the same routine, the nurse comes in, and tells me they’re going to suction his stomach in the nursery. Again, you’ve just had your baby a few hours ago, and now they’re going to suction his stomach? Dibs wasn’t worried about this in the least. Nope. I go into the nursery with them and watch as they pump his little stomach. It was not the best thing I’ve had to watch, you know.

They tell me I should leave him in the nursery for the rest of the night so we can get some sleep, and they can monitor him. Um, are you kidding me? We weren’t going to take our eyes off the little guy. Thankfully, the stomach pump worked, and he was fine for the rest of the night. I know, because I watched him like a hawk.

We’ve later found out that this was a result of Dibs’ water breaking, and her not pushing him out. He was breathing in the blood and mucous. Yeah, I know. Remember when I told you guys we had to wait for our doctor to deliver the baby? Well, that caused this. They don’t tell you this in a class, so I’m telling you now.

If you wake up in the middle of your first night with your kid and he’s throwing up blood, be calm and suction the shit out of him.

Advertisement