William Patton is here

William Patton McAllister was born on January 15th 2018 at 9:10 am. He weighed 8 lbs. 8 ozs. And was 20.5” long. He was immediately placed on my chest and I was amazed at how content this made him. My girls were weighed, measured, wiped off and had the eye stuff out on before they put them on my chest. But they’ve changed everything since then and now wait to do all of that stuff until they’ve been on your chest for a couple of hours and let you breastfeed if you want. Those first few moments were so sweet and we were so excited to be meeting our son.

Upon cleaning him up and getting his weight and stuff they determined that his blood sugar was low. I knew this was a possibility due to my gestational diabetes but since neither of my girls struggled with it I didn’t think he would either. They didn’t seem too concerned at that point but said they’d have to continue to monitor it and gave him a sugar paste in the mean time. The next time they checked it was still low so they had me start supplementing formula to see if that would get it to rise. Well the next time they checked it was dangerously low and they broke the news to me that he was going to have to be admitted to the NICU. I was doing all I could to contain my emotions about this, because I knew if I got upset my girls would see that and be very scared and also get upset, but when they mentioned the risk of brain damage with sugar levels that low I lost my ability to contain emotion and began crying. As soon as I was crying both girls were crying hysterically. So my nurse and the NICU staff coming in at the time probably thought we were all crazy. I managed to calm them down a bit and get myself together too and Neal and I walked him up to his private room in the NICU. We had to leave them for an hour or so while they put the IV in and got him set up. We went downstairs to let the girls draw some pictures to hang in his new room and to say goodbye to them. About a half an hour after the girls left the neonatologist along with the NICU director came into our room wheeling William in his bed. We didn’t understand what was going on. The doctor explained to us that upon putting his IV in he got so mad and his adrenaline likely kicked his body into function and his blood sugar rose to a great level. He canceled the NICU orders and was bringing him back to us. They continued to check his sugars but he kept them up. We were so relieved!!

We were able to go home the next day around 1!! My mom spent 9 days with us and was so much help. This baby has been a dream. We’ve never experienced a baby that will sleep when you lay them in a bassinet or swing and we check his breathing often because it is just so foreign to us. He is so sweet and we are so excited to have this precious little boy added to our family. 

Look how much he looks like Ella!