Mama Bear

The phlebotomists can go to hell. They kept waking my baby up last night, and for the first time since I've been here, I got snippy.

It's bad enough that the nurses come in every four hours to check his blood pressure, temp, and whatever else. They had been in at 8, and Teague went back to sleep. Then at 10, the door opened and the lights came on. And I don't mean the dim lights. Full ceiling lights. Finger prick, fill the vial, crying baby.

Five minutes later, it's, "Oh, sorry. That was supposed to be a vein. We'll get a false read from the finger prick." Starting over with the vein. By that time it was close to 11, so I just had the nurses do their midnight checks early so that Teague wouldn't have to be up again in another hour. They did. Love the nurses.

They gave him until a little after 4 a.m. to come back, so he got five nice hours of sleep. But he had trouble settling when they were done. He wanted to "wock-wock" (rock), so we were in the rocking chair for more than an hour. Finally at 5:30, he was back in bed.

At 6 a.m., on came the lights. I'm not kidding.

"What do you need?"

"I need to take more blood."

"You're going to have to wait until 8."

"OK; let me check with the nurse."

Go ahead and leave the obnoxious light on while you do that. Teague, of course, was crying, so I said, "He's already up. Just get the blood so you can get out of here."

They did.

Then I laid down the law for the nurses. Lab people can come and suck whatever blood they need, but they have to do it on the nurses' schedule. My baby already cries every time he hears the door open. We've got to economize the irritations.

I've started putting off their four-hour checks now, too, if Teague is asleep. He's not going to be able to kick this bowel problem if he's sleep deprived. His oxygen saturation has been normal the whole time he's been here, his blood pressure has been normal since Sunday, and his temp has been normal as well. Leave him the heck alone and check him while he's awake.