I can tell you there was a lot I didn't like about Nursing school. One of the rotations I absolutely despised was the OBGYN rotation. I had no interest at time of my life in pregnant females or delivering babies. Despite my dislike for the OBGYN rotation there was one thing I remember. I remember the day like it was yesterday. She was discussing something called wimpy white boy syndrome. What is this you ask. Its basically an unofficial diagnosis given to white male babies. Apparently white male babies are more fragile, have a harder time during the transition phase of delivery. (This is the time when the baby has to adapt to life outside the womb.) A few things the babies have to do are normalize and maintain temperature, blood glucose, learn to breath ect.) Fast forward 4 years later and I was living what my instructor talked about. I really had a baby with wimpy white boy syndrome.
You have all read the birth story and how Noah decided to pull his plug early. He was born at 36 weeks and 6 days. One day shy of being considered "full term". This one day lacking in the womb left him in the premature category. After a few days of reflecting on his life and his abilities during the first week I could really see what my instructor was talking about.
After Noah's delivery the nurses quickly focused on his breathing. He was breathing to fast and he was retracting. They threatened him with taking him to the NICU. After being threatened with this he seemed he corrected his unwelcome behavior.
Later we quickly noticed he wasn't really feeding well. He seemed to lack a strong suck reflex and wasn't doing a good job of rooting. Due to his lack of reflexes Katie had to expel her colostrum and place it inside his mouth.
In the middle of night he woke up screaming. We knew he was hungry but could not get him to eat. He just didn't seem to know what to do. We called the nurse and got some formula. We placed some in a bottle and stuck it in his mouth. He didn't know what to do with this either. He was lacking his suckle reflex. This was the beginning of our high maintenance wimpy white boy.
We ended up feeding him with a syringe and small tube. He practiced his sucking reflex on our finger while we injected the milk into his mouth. We did this around the clock every two hours.
Later on the first day we noticed him turning a lovely shade of orange. They ran a Billirubin test and discovered he was turning jaundice. The physician decided we would wait until the next morning to see if he continued to climb. Sure enough it did increase. He decided to initiate phototherapy.
Our little pumpkin was sent home on a billibed and needed to be tube fed every 2 hours.
After a couple days on the phototherapy his liver decided to start breaking down the billirubin. Every thing turned out great! You would not know looking at our son today he was such a wimp when he was born.
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