Day 3

Today is officially day 3, we don’t count the first day. Louis (twin 2) was reunited with his Mummy and brother in the early hours of Saturday morning. Both babies still have to go to SCBU three times a day as they have to have prophylactic IV antibiotics (therein lies the rant) but so far they are both doing really well. Daughter is breastfeeding and then giving them top-ups, they seem to be coping well with this so their adaptability mught make life easier when daughter is left to her devices. The hope is that they can all come home Monday evening when they have received their last dose of antibiotics.

The rant – here it comes. SCBU. They have made a drugs error with Louis. One of the antibiotics he is on is Gentamycin, tough old drug and toxic in large doses. Well, yesterday evening, once all the visitors including Dad had gone, a paediatrician and a SCBU nurse materialised and told daughter that Louis had received an extra dose of Gent. As a result they would be observing him for kidney damage and deafness (both permanent) and taking blood to assess the levels. They are very sorry for the mistake but unfortunately there is nothing they can do to rectify it. It used to be that midwives administered the IV drugs to the newborns on the ward, that was stopped because we were not trained special care nurses. What I know is that when I had to calculate, draw up and administer IV drugs to baby I was like a bomb disposal bod, everything was checked, checked, checked again, and then checked with a colleague. So now a special care trained nurse has administered a drug to my little grandchild which could, potentially, cause him lasting problems and affect the rest of his life. Right then, get those babies off these IV drugs. We had been told on Friday that due to the weekend and the Bank holiday the results of the blood cultures would not be available until Tuesday, I accepted that, why call in the ‘on-call’ microbiologist for something so routine. Today SIL told the doctors that he wanted the results now as he did not want the twins exposed to any further potential for errors of judgement. They refused, ‘the labs closed’. No it’s not. It can be open if required and I really do believe that given the circumstances they should call in the microbiologist. They owe them much.

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Twinday

Daughter went in Wednesday night to be ‘clerked’. That means that she was told to be there for 7pm, and then had to wait 2 hours for a doctor to see her so she could sign the consent form for her section, and be given her pre-meds to take home. There must be a more efficient system than this.

Yesterday morning saw us at the hospital for 8am. She was the only one for an elective caesarian that day so everyone assumed that it would all be ‘done and dusted’ by 10.30, wrong! An emergency on labour ward, which required the consultant to operate, ensured that it was 11am before we were walking into the operating theatre. The caesarian went wonderfully. Twin 1, who was coming head first, came out effortlessly and immediately made his feelings known about being pulled so abruptly from his shared lodgings. Twin 2 was breech and so was slightly more difficult to extract and was more reluctant to join in the chorus with his brother. After about 5 ‘floppy’ minutes he came out of his revery and screamed his head of so the paediatrician congratulated Mummy and Daddy and left. SIL had no interest in the cords, which had been left long (routine with early babies or those who may need some additional help as they provide easier access to the blood vessels) so the midwives invited me to trim down the cords. Daddy was holding Twin 1 so I picked up his brother and was cuddling him whilst chatting to the happy parents. Daughter was being sutured, always the longest part of a caesarian section. The midwives had gone to the sluice to examine the placenta and  called me in look at it, it was absolutely huge, and it was really easy to see the one sac that had been round both babies and then the 2 sacs inside that, one for each baby. The little surprise element was that about 3 inches away from the main placenta, but attached by small blood vessels was a separate succenturiate lobe, all the student midwives in the unit were invited to come and see this deviation. It was during this time that I started to be a bit worried about the twin I was cuddling. He seemed slighly less pink, his breathing was rapid, and his lips had taken on a dusky hue. I put him back on the resuscitaire and call ed the two midwives over. He was now very pale and he had also lost muscle tone, the paediatrician was ‘fast’ bleeped and we started giving baby oxygen, his heartbeat remained 120bpm so that was a good sign. As soon as the paed looked at him he requested that one of the midwives take him to SCBU and he went to daughter and SIL and explained that baby needed a bit of help and he would keep them informed or SIL could go in when he felt ready. I really wasn’t that concerned, I thought that he would be back with us in a couple of hours. I’ve seen it so many times, baby is taken off to SCBU, given a bit of oxygen, warmed up and a few hours later it’s as if nothing happened so it did come as a bit of a shock when one of my friends came in and said that they had him on CPAP,  a machine used to help with TTN.

Before we took daughter up to the ward we wheeled her bed into SCBU so that she could see T2. Unfortunately, because he was all wired up, she couldn’t hold him, only stroke him but we lay T1 next to him for a few minutes so that they would know that their little friend of 9 months had also come into this big, bad world.

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