On Saturday evening he was exceptionally sleepy. I manage to 'enjoy' the Eurovision Song contest with no interruption and had to wake him for a sleep before bedtime. At the time I was just pleased to have a quite evening.
The next morning he was also quite lethargic and then late morning he was exceptionally sick. Matthew is not really a sicky baby. He was not really crying to be fed and only wanted some of his feeds. In the end I rang NHS direct. They were very good and a nurse rang back after just 10 minutes with some advice. However I was still worried and as he is so young I really wanted someone to see him in person so in the end we decided to take him to A&E.
St Helier hospital has a pediatrician A&E section so it wasn't that long before we were seen. Of course they examined him and asked lots of questions. They were not too concerned but wanted to take some blood tests and keep him in for 24 hours to observe him and get the blood test results. I must admit I was quite upset by all this. I was of course very worried, I found them taking the blood tests from his little hand quite traumatic and of course I was quite upset about being kept in hospital knowing that Simon would probably go home and I would be quite isolated.
They took us upstairs to the children's ward where we were given a tiny cubicle with just enough room for the cot and the camp bed. Simon stayed with Matthew whilst I went home to get everything we needed. During that time Matthew was very sick again so I was pleased that we were at the hospital.
We had a lovely nurse called Shelia look after us that night. The ward was not busy so she gave us a lot of attention. She gave us some Diarlyte for Matthew which is water with some nutrients etc so that he didn't get dehydrated but to give him a break from the milk.
In the early morning the doctor came to visit. She was not too worried and was happy that Matthew had had a good night.
To cut a long story short - in the end they were happy for us to come home on the Monday but wanted Matthew to move his bowels and have a couple of formula feeds before we did so. In the end they gave him a suppository which worked within about 30 minutes. We were also given some lactulose to help him go at home. We have had very mixed advise about bowel movements over the last few weeks from doctors/midwives/ health visitors/ hospital and we are now just beginning to realise that there is really no 'normal' baby.
I was delighted to come home Monday afternoon as I felt very cooped up in out little 'cell'. Tuesday was quite difficult as the combination of treatments seemed to have the opposite effect on Matthew!!!! ( not really the place to discuss the full effect of these!). But I'm pleased to report that Matthew is now happy and healthy once more!
Here a couple of photos of Matthew at the hospital. Bless him with his little hand bandaged up from the blood test - they kept the equipment in his hand in case he needed fluids by drip.
