I ended up not going home yesterday to take a shower. I had a horrible feeling. Cris stayed home overnight because he had to work early the next day, so he missed most of it.

Saturday morning, a new nurse came in to take care of Eric. We'll just call her Miss Prune. Miss Prune is a young and attractive brunette but it is hard to tell because her demeanor is one of an old crochety lady who knows your business better than you do. She rarely smiles and is very cold and professional.

Miss Prune started talking to me about his care and gavaging his day's feeds. Except she used another word that I did not understand and I kept asking her to explain, which she wouldn't do. She just kept treating me like I was an idiot for not understanding. Finally I realized that she wanted to gavage Eric and I clarified it. Yes she wanted to gavage him. Gavaging is when you put the feeds through his tube as opposed to orally.

The thing is, Eric has an ND-Tube now. With an ND-Tube, feeds have to be slowly dripped into his large intestines, which is where the end of the tube lies. If it was just an NG-tube, which goes into his stomach, that would be okay. If you gavage a baby with an ND-tube, it will cause all sorts of havoc and cause a baby to lose electrolytes and other damage. In other words, you DO NOT do this! Also, you have to continue oral feedings so a baby does not forget how to suck and has to relearn.

I managed to explain it to her and get her to realize that he gets oral feedings during the day. He is never gavaged fed. I don't think she believed me, but she backed off.

Everything was fine until Cris got back to the hospital. Around this time, I started to have a weird feeling about leaving Eric alone for too long. We were going to go home and be back by 7pm, but decided to just go for a belated Valentine's dinner and was back around 5:30pm. I wanted to be back before 6pm because I was afraid Miss Prune would gavage the medicine that was supposed to be dripped.

Now before we left, we made it clear:
1. That Eric was not supposed to sleep in the crib that the hospital provided. It is a flat crib and Eric needs to be at an incline at all times or else he will vomit. I have filled the crib with stuff to make sure that they don't use it for sleeping.
2. That when Eric needs to sleep, he is to sleep in his Amby bed. She argued about it with Cris, but finally backed down.
3. Eric is only supposed to eat 2 oz per feeding since yesterday he would throw up anymore than that. We provide the Playtex Nursers for that. He has to have the Playtex Nursers because of his gag reflex and he tends to gag and vomit if other nipples are used. Cris tested this recently with two different nipples. Yup, gag reflex still there.

When we came back:
1. Eric was sleeping in the hospital crib on a pillow with two rolled blankets by his side. A stuffed toy smothering his face. In no way was the crib emptied for it to be safe for Eric.
2. Both the hospital bottle and the Playtex Nursers had been used.
3. The Evil RT was there taking care of his neighbor. Only briefly mentioned before but she is the one who made Eric miss his breathing treatments. She had held down the breathing mask so hard that it left a mark on Eric's face. When I complained about her mistreating Eric, she retaliated by not giving Eric his medicine. We had spoken with the hospital about this and she was supposed to have been disciplined because of it. Hmmmm, obviously she wasn't disciplined that hard.

I went out and told Miss Prune that I wanted to talk to her. She came into the room and I let her have it. She claimed that it was the tech (nurse's helper). I had met the tech before and she had been nothing but helpful.

I got the distinct impression that Miss Prune decided she knew better than us on how to take care of Eric. Um no, we are his parents and spend every day with him. Maybe if she had bothered to read his case files, she would have known more about him. At least she would have known not to gavage a baby with an ND-tube.

We will be talking to the Nurse Manger on Monday when she comes in.